DAYS OF BLUNDER

DAYS OF THUNDER (1990)
dir: Tony Scott

DAYS OF BLUNDER
MAD #302, April 1992
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

From an article called Video Reviews parodying Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.

DAYS OF PLUNDER
Cracked #259, December 1990
a: Walter Brogan

Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) shows up as a new stock car driver. He has no experience, but he shows coach Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) and owner Tim Daland (Randy Quaid) what he can do. He tries out in the car of Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker), who becomes his rival.

The wheelchair is a reference to how a year earlier Cruise won an Oscar for playing a Vietnam Vet in Born on the Fourth of July


The site of each race is printed on the screen at the beginning of each scene.

Even going to dinner after a race, Cole and Rowdy drive in the streets as if they are still competing.

Both Rowdy and Cole get into a serious accident and have to go to the hospital. They're still racers when they have to get to the emergency room in their wheelchairs. At he hospital, Cole falls in love with Dr. Lewicki (Nicole Kidman)

Trickle and Lewicki start a relationship and Burns can't drive no more. He's replaced by up-and-comer Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes). Rowdy Burns has to undergo an operation but is too proud to go to a doctor, so now it is up to frenemy Cole Trickle to convince him. Rowdy will do it on one condition: Daytona, the big event, is coming up and he asks Cole to drive his car.

Andrew Dice Clay is one of the actors in the last panel even though his movie, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, isn't one of the stickers.

There was sort of a parody years later with Talladega Nights, the common ground being they were both about NASCAR drivers and both had John C. Reilly as co-star. Will Ferrell and Tom Cruise had the same career trajectory where they played the same character every few months except this time it's a race car driver, an ice skater, a bartender, etc.