Wednesday, March 20, 2024

A Moment of Comics

The National Lampoon parodied Mad magazine in November of 1971. A roommate from my graduate school days had this in an old National Lampoon collection and offered it to me before we parted ways. I declined because it seemed like too big a prize for me to just take for free. I was stupid back then. At least I found a copy of the parody online. 

My favorite piece in the issue was the movie parody "Citizen Gaines," written by John Boni and drawn by Ernie Colon. Mad founder William Gaines is depicted in this send up as a Stan Lee type of caricature, a visionary without the vision. As someone who has dealt with similar visionaries over the years, I related to this part where he and Harvey Kurtzman "co-create" MAD's original principals. 


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