THE CRUMMYMOONERS

THE HONEYMOONERS
1955-1956 CBS

THE CRUMMYMOONERS
MAD #260, January 1986
w: Larry Siegel
a: Sam Viviano

From a feature they had in MAD for a while called A Bad Case of the Re-Runs. The show only lasted one season but is famous because it lived a life for decades in syndication. This program about two working class couples in Brooklyn starred Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason), his wife Alice (Audrey Meadows), and their neighbors Ed Norton (Art Carney) and Trixie (Joyce Randolph).

The opening panel shows Fred and Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy and 80s New York mayor Ed Koch. The show has become more controversial lately because Ralph was always threatening to punch Alice. The joke was that he talked big but was too meek to ever really go through with it,and she was always the smarter and stronger one. You may have a different perspective but regardless of how you see it, you can still enjoy the show if you can overlook that.

The show was spun of from sketches on The Jackie Gleason Show. Virtually no clips of that show exist.

THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW
1952-1970 DuMont, CBS
THE JACK E. GLISTEN STORY
MAD #25, September 1955
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

There was a Honeymooners comic in the mid-80s. MAD artist Jack Davis did the cover for one issue.

Jackie Gleason was one of many comedians and TV shows DC comics adapted along with Bob Hope, Martin & Lewis (later just Jerry), Dobie Gillis, and Sgt. Bilko that will never be reprinted because of the red tape that would be involved with the licensing. Except for a few covers, most have been miscredited to Mort Drucker. The art looks kind of like his but is usually by Bob Oksner or Owen Fitzgerald.

There were two Warner Brothers cartoons that spoofed the show.

UPDATE:

BIG JOHN IS COMING
Cracked #31, September 1963
a: John Severin

This is attributed to Jackie Gleason though I don't know how much he had to do with it.

UPDATE 2:

THE HONEYMOANERS Cracked Monster Party #7, December 1989
w: Rich Kriegel (lou Silverstone)
a: Win Mortimer

FUNNY TO SHRINK THE KIDS

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS (1989)
dir: Joe Johnston

MAD # 292, January 1990
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) is a scientist that has invented a ray to shrink objects that he can't seem to get to work. His son Nick (Robert Oliveri) is an inspiring inventor himself. Next door is his jock neighbor Russ Thompson (Matt Frewer), who wishes his son Ron (Jared Rushton) would follow in his footsteps. His brother Little Russ (Thomas Wilson Brown) is practicing baseball and he breaks the Szalinski's attic window and the ball lands on the ray up there, shrinking the some of the objects. Ron makes Little Russ go and apologize to the Szalinzkis, which he also sees as an excuse to talk to their teenage daughter Amy (Amy O'Neill). All four kids go upstairs to retrieve the ball and the ray, which has now gone haywire from being hit by the baseball, and shrinks them.

It also shrinks Wayne's couch, a plot device later used. Their dog Quark is later used as well, and like most MAD spoofs thinks here. Wayne had pitched his machine to a group of scientists earlier, and has now come home frustrated that it didn't go over, writing it off as a failure and smashing it. After his tantrum, he sweeps up the mess he's made and throws it in the garbage, not seeing the shrunken kids. After taking the trash out, the kids escape the bag and find themselves on the lawn. The Thompsons next door are getting ready for a fishing trip.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids got a lot of its audience by having a cartoon before the feature, something that hadn't been done for a long time.

There's a long adventure (the Cracked parody gets more into it) on their lawn that involves all of them in large blades of grass, drops of dew that are rivers, sprinklers are huge storms, and the like. They fight an ant over an Oreo they find and end up taming and befriending the ant. Tinkerbell and the Mad Hatter are not in the movie, just also properties of Disney. Russ sneaks a cigarette in the backyard and throws the butt onto the neighboring lawn, which the kids use for fire at night. At home Wayne Finds the missing couch and discovers the ray actually does work and has shrunken the kids.

Lily Tomlin complains this movie is derivative of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, though her movie is taken from several different movies as well.

Wayne's wife Diane (Marcia Strassman) comes home and he has to break the news about the missing children to her. They both look for the kids by hovering over the lawn suspended from a clothesline so they don't step on them, searching for them with magnifying glasses. Quark hears them and rescues them, bringing them the rest of the way back and into the house. Wayne finds them in his Cheerios and brings them upstairs to bring them back to normal size. Russ Thompson volunteers to have the ray tested on himself before using it on them. Here they make a reference to the actor having been Max Headroom.

This was the cover for the German edition of MAD.

From If Famous Movies Were Made Into Comic Strips by Russ Cooper, in MAD #295, June 1990

HONEY, I STUNK THE KIDS
Cracked #251, January 1990
w: Charles E. Hall
a: Walter Brogan

The movie ended with the two families getting and having a giant turkey. Here it's a California Raisin.

Here is the cartoon that proceeded it. Although what annoys me about the Roger Rabbit series that the action is in 360 degrees and the characters are always in motion, something that didn't exist in the forties cartoons they're paying homage to.Mbr>

HONEY WASTE

HONEY WEST
ABC 1965-1966

HONEY WASTE
MAD #103, June 1966
w: Tom Koch
a: Mort Drucker

Detective series started as a backdoor pilot of Burke's Law and the first TV series to have a woman in the lead that wasn't domestic help or a housewife. Often began or ended with Ms. West (Anne Francis) and her partner Sam Bolt (John Ericson) practicing martial arts. She had a pet ocelot named Bruce and her home was supervised by Aunt Meg (Irene Hervey).

They communicated through microphones hidden in an object like a pair of sunglasses or a makeup case.

Note Sean Connery in the next-to-last panel.

There's the apteryx on the windowsill, one of the eyeball kicks MAD used in the sixties. The Lieutenant at the end is drawn as Inspector Clouseau.

SUGAR SOUTH
Sick #40, November 1965
w: Bob Elliott (not Bob of Bob & Ray)
a: Angelo Torres

The show first aired in September so this was obviously written before the show even aired. You can tell because the premise and established tropes such as her partner and animal print fashion are not used.

In the show, it is also established that she inherited the private eye business from her father, something the writer could not have known about.

HINDU

HONDO (1953)
dirs: John Farrow, John Ford

HINDU
Panic #4, August/September 1954
w: Al Feldstein
a: Wallace Wood

This was a 3-D Western. It begins with Angie Lowe(Geraldine Page) and her son Johnny (Lee Aker) on their ranch waiting for her husband to come back home. Hondo Lane (John Wayne) and his dog Sam come up. He explains he's from the cavalry and fell off his horse fighting Indians. He is part Apache himself.

References are made to another Western called Shane that has a similar setting and ends with the father leaving home with the hopes that he'll come back.

Hondo claims that because he has Apache blood, he has a strong sense of smell and can therefore smell Angie. He lets Johnny to pet his dog knowing the dog will bite him, but he knows this will teach him a lesson in becoming a man. The sequence teaching Johnny to swim happens like this, but isn't until later in the movie.

They leave out how during Hondo's stay, Angie discovers he's a famous gunman and initially doesn't trust him, but comes to learn he's a gentleman.

After Hondo leaves, the Apaches invade the property and Johnny tries to save his mother but is too small for the gun and falls down recoiling. The head of the tribe admires his bravery and makes him an honorary Apache.

The Indian on the nickel was replaced with Thomas Jefferson around this time.

Much later, Hondo has returned to the cavalry on a new horse, which was Angie's. A stranger (Leo Gordon) claims the horse is his and gets in a fight with Hondo and gets beaten (not shot like here) and killed. Hondo realizes the man he just killed was Angie's missing husband, and returns to her ranch.

He runs into Gene Autry as the Lone Ranger (?) and is informed by Bob Hope (Son of Paleface reference?) he's in the wrong movie.

Hondo's sidekick Buffalo (Ward Bond) finds a photo of Johnny on the dead man, confirming it was Angie's husband. On his way back, he is attacked by Indians. The film had an intermission even though it was only an hour and a half. Maybe people couldn't handle wearing 3-D glasses that long.

Hondo returns and Angie says he is in fact her husband so the Apaches will spare him. This is where he teaches Johnny to swim. He also teaches Johnny to fish.

Getting the news there's no need for a cavalry outpost there, Hondo and the Lowes go to his ranch to start a new family. "Somebody's gotta work..." was how they ended every story in that particular issue of Panic.

HAMBO
Crazy #7, July 1954
w: Stan Lee
a: Carl Hubbell

The cover was drawn by Russ Heath.

All these comics used Melvin as their go-to "funny" name.

HUNDO
Get Lost #3, June-July 1954
w & a: Ross Andru & Mike Esposito