THE MORONIC WOMAN

THE BIONIC WOMAN
ABC, NBC 1976-78

THE MORONIC WOMAN
MAD # 188, January 1977
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

The Six Million Dollar Man was such a hit, the networks decided to do a spinoff. The premise of the original show was that astronaut Steve Austin was in an accident and was injured so critically he had to be rebuilt from scratch, and the government made him into a cyborg and had him perform missions for them.

The Bionic Woman was basically the same show. Not saying that Jamie Sommers (Lindsay Wagner) was just Steve Austin with tits, because they were always crossing over into each others' episodes and working together, and The Bionic Woman was probably the more popular of the two shows.

It all started when Steve Austin went back to his hometown and met up with his old girlfriend. On a parachuting date, Jamie also got into an accident resulting in her being rebuilt with bionic parts and working for the Office of Scientific Intelligence, supervised by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) Until the mid-80s, practically every TV show had an opening explaining the origin.

In her real identity she taught school.

Every episode had a slow-motion action scene, often with the “at-at-at-at-at” sound effect.

THE BIONIC LADY
Cracked #135, Septermber 1976
a: John Severin

They often used the inside front and back covers to make a poster.

Steve's parents (Martha Scott and Ford Rainey) let her live in an apartment above the barn next to them, which is weird, because if you were drafted as a government agent, they would provide housing for you.

(Lucas Tanner and Gabriel Kotter were teachers on their own shows)

THE BOOBONIC WOMAN
Crazy #27, July 1977
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Walter Brogan

(Cosmopolitan had a piece on Burt Reynolds and the centerfold was a picture of him naked, spoofing the Playboy centerfold, and for several years thereafter there were jokes as if every issue of Cosmopolitan had photos of male nudes.)


One of Jamie's features was super-hearing.

It's faded, but that's supposed to be a photo of President Carter replacing Ford. The one-note joke about Ford is that he was dumb and Carter's is that he was a peanut farmer before getting into politics.

I doubt the writer of the Crazy parody ever saw an episode, but at least seems to have gotten the premise and features down. Which is more than I can say about this Sick parody where the writer only seemed to know that she was artificial in some way.

THE BIOMIC WOMAN
Sick #117, October 1977
w: Joe Gill
a: Jack Sparling

There was also a comic of it.