National Lampoon — December 1971, "A Heart-Warming Christmas" Issue (Vintage Magazine)

Original December 1971 issue of National Lampoon — the twenty-first issue overall and the last of the magazine’s second year. Theme: A Heart-Warming Christmas. The cover is a numbered diagram — rendered in the style of a clinical illustration or museum exhibit — depicting a thoroughly bleak holiday scene: a drunken father sprawled on the floor, a woman collapsed in bed, a street preacher holding a REPENT sign, and various figures in states of quiet despair, each assigned a number keyed to a caption below. Teasers: This Is Your Life…Francis Gary Powers · The Sweetest Story Ever Told · Blind-Date Comics · 5 Erotic Editorial Fantasies. Original cover price: 75¢.

The numbered diagram format transforms a scene of domestic ruin into something that reads like a nature documentary — detached, precise, and deeply funny. One of the more conceptually sophisticated Christmas covers in the Lampoon’s run. Stored in a protective sleeve. Sold as found.

Details

• National Lampoon, December 1971
• Theme: A Heart-Warming Christmas
• Cover: Numbered diagram of a bleak holiday scene
• Teasers: Francis Gary Powers · The Sweetest Story Ever Told · Blind-Date Comics
• Original cover price: 75¢
• Second year of publication — twenty-first issue overall
• Final issue of 1971
• Stored in protective sleeve
• Sold as found — vintage condition