DORK MAN

DARKMAN (1990)
dir: Sam Raimi

DORKMAN
MAD #302, April 1992
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

From an article called Video Reviews parodying Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, showing clips of current movies. Here were scenes from Darkman, a movie where a scientist gets his face disfigured by gangsters and he takes revenge on the people who tried to kill him with the facial duplication technology he was working on. (More detailed information below)

The girlfriend was played by Frances McDormand, and Drucker's drawing doesn't look anything like her because it was only for that one panel, and it wasn't thought that she'd go on to be anybody at the time.

Cracked did a full parody of the movie and also made a Joker joke. Their title was slightly different. It had a comma and an exclamation point.

DORK, MAN!
Cracked #260, January 1991
a: Walter Brogan

The scientist, Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is developing something that can grow skin grafts onto people but so far it only lasts for 100 minutes. His girlfriend Julie (McDormand) is a lawyer representing a real estate firm which it turns out has been bribing the city to do create their project, getting their money from the crime boss Durant (Larry Drake). This is detailed in a memo that Julie has left at Peyton's apartment. When Julie tells developer Louis Strack (Colin Friels) she left the incriminating memo there, Durant and his henchmen come to get it.

This is when they disfigure Peyton and kill his assistant Yakky (Nelson Mashita). Peyt on is thought to be dead, but his body is found and resuscitated. (It isn't made to look like them, but the nurse and doctor are played by Jenny Agutter and John Landis, an in-joke referencing An American Werewolf in London).

Peyton escapes, and since his lab has been destroyed, moves it to an abandoned warehouse. Now he has to take revenge on the people who ruined his life. He tortures to man who killed Yakky, then uses the facial technology he was developing to impersonate Paul (Nicholas Worth), the man who picks up drug money for Durant's syndicate. They come to collect from the real Paul who wasn't there.

Julie comes to visit the grave of Peyton, and he shows up with a skin graft and tells her he's not really dead. (Plothole: So he was mistaken for dead. It still means they buried a body). He impersonates Durant and runs into the real one and the hitmen don't know which one to kill. Peyton's identity theft can only last a limited amount of time, which is up, so he runs away. Later, he has a date with Julie at an amusement park and when the carnies refuse to give him the prize he won, he hulks out.

Julie figures something is going on and follows Peyton to his lab where he confesses what he has been doing, She has been seeing Louis thinking Peyton was dead and now breaks it off. Since Louis now knows Peyton is alive, he has Durant kill him.

This leads to Peyton chasing Durant on Durant's helicopter and killing him. Meanwhile Louis has kidnapped Julie and taken her to a construction site where she's rescued by Peyton and pushes him off. Peyton then disappears into a crowd with the assumption that he will never see her again and could now be anyone.