Bashar Assad sneaks into Walter White's meth lab on this week's New Yorker cover

Cartoonist Barry Blitt, whose 77 New Yorker covers have included the perennially funny baby Rush Limbaugh and brilliant toe-tapping Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has again blended pop culture, absurdism and current events to create piercing social commentary. In this week's cover, Blitt takes one of television's most compelling villains, "Breaking Bad's" meth boss Walter White, rendered helpless as real-life villain Bashar Assad takes over the lab to concoct some lethal chemical weapons.

Blitt titled the cover "Bad Chemistry," telling the New Yorker that it “seems like there’s never a shortage of real life villains to make even the most conscience-free fictional character look comic in comparison—alas.”