NBC 1981-1987
SWILL STREET BLUES
MAD #231, April 1982
w: Tom Koch
a: Angelo Torres
There were more characters actually on the show than featured in the splash, but the main cast here is Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti), Mick Belker (Bruce Weitz), Howard Hunter (James B. Sikking), Leo Schnitz (Robert Hirschfeld), J. D. LaRue (Kiel Martin), Ray Catellano (Rene Enriquez), Henry Goldblume (Joe Spano), and Lucy Bates (Betty Thomas). Grant Tinker was the president of NBC.
Crazy #87, June 1982
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble
Michael Warren had previously been a college basketball player.
UPDATE:
Cover for the Mexican edition, which must have also done a Smurfs parody, or maybe a parody of the Schtroumpfs comic albums. Don't know why Hunter is chosen as “it”.
ILL STREET BLUES
Bananas #58, c. 1982
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
You see, because they had a big cast.
In the Mad splash, the guy in the 'Penn State' shirt next to Grant Tinker is Erik Estrada from CHiPs.
ReplyDeleteI looked it up, and 'Officer Squeaks' is based on a real character, Officer Charlie Weeks, played by Charles Hallahan. He was only on a couple episodes, so it's not surprising Torres didn't have reference for him. (If you want to see what he looked like, he was in the Cracked parody of Grace Under Fire as the boss.)
In the Crazy parody, 'the Black Sparrows' are the show's street gang, the Black Arrows.
'Embrace' is Grace Gardner, played by Barbara Babcock. Apparently, Grace really did throw herself at Esterhaus that way; when the actor playing him died, the show killed off his character by saying he'd had a heart attack while in bed with her. In her grief she became a nun, briefly. Babcock later played the newspaper editor in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
I think a lot of times a writer watched one or two shows and assumed a guest star was a regular sometimes.
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