BLEAK FOR THE FUTURE

BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)
dir: Robert Zemeckis

BLEAK FOR THE FUTURE
MAD #260, January 1986
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Marty McFly(Michael J. Fox) is a protegee of mad scientist Dr. Brown (Christopher Lloyd) who sees him gunned down by terrorists (it's never explained why) and ends up in their time machine going back in time and meeting his parents. He sees his father (Crispin Glover) as a teenager being picked on by high school bullies.

By rescuing his father, it is he who gets hit by a car and rescued by his mother's family, which makes his mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) fall in love with him instead of his father, which is how his parents met.

The joke in the movie is she thinks his name is Calvin because it says 'Calvin Klein' on his underwear.

“Where's the Beef?” was a famous slogan and ad campaign for Wendy's at the time.

Marty meets up with the doctor in 1955. He has to convince him they know each other, and he needs the scientist's help to get back to the future (I mentioned the title. Everyone has to drink!). The materials needed for time travel don't exist yet, but Marty has an idea. Earlier he was told the clock tower went out at exactly the same time he went back to, caused by a lightning storm. Lightning can make the time machine work.

The picture he keeps of his family is fading, meaning his parents haven't met yet, so he has to act fast to make sure they do to make sure he's born.

In a scene not used in the movie, while playing matchmaker for his parents at the high school dance posing as a student, he has to play with the band.

His mother is still infatuated with him despite him trying to get his parents to dance together at the prom. The father stands up to the bully (Tom Wilson) and punches him out, getting the mother to fall for him instead. Mission accomplished, Marty can now travel back to the future (drink again!)

Being a parody, his parents use birth control so he's not conceived after all.

National Lampoon published a story called Remembering Mama in 1972 which many say was inspiration for this movie. It has the Oedipal motif and a time travel theme but I don't see it.

UPDATE:

BOX OFFICE FUTURE
Cracked #218, May 1985
w: Joe Catalano & Mort Todd
a: John Severin

For a very brief period, Paul Laikin returned as editor of Cracked. He had been one of the original editors in the sixties, then in the seventies and eighties he was editor of Sick and then Crazy. By that point he was recycling articles he had written previously, using family members' names on the masthead to collect extra paychecks, and taking kickbacks from the artists he was using. Most of the artists they had left in disgust. Assistant Mort Todd told the publisher what Laikin was doing and they promptly fired Laikin, leaving Todd in charge. He was able to bring Severin back and this parody marked Severin's triumphant return.

That year there were several other teen scientist movies such as Weird Science, My Science Project, and Real Genius. There was a school bully not used in the MADparody named Biff (Tom Wilson)