MAVERSHTICK

MAVERICK (1994)
dir: Richard Donner

MAVERSHTICK
MAD #331. October 1994
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson) comes to the town of Crystal River to earn the $3,000 he needs for the $25,000 entry fee to a national poker championship. He goes to a saloon to play poker with Angel (Alfred Molina) and Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), another con-artist who becomes his foil then lover then foil again.

In the splash panel, way on the left, is Whitefish Will, a character from a childrens' book Drucker also illustrated. The woman with the axe is Carrie Nation, predecessor to today's internet scold.

Later, a fight breaks out and Maverick chases them all away by showing what a fast draw he is, which intimidates his fellow players and lets him win. Not revealed in the parody, the fighters were provocateurs he payed to instigate a fight. That night, Annabelle seduces Bransford which he stops, as he realizes it was a ploy to steal his wallet. The next morning, he takes a coach to the riverboat poker championship where he meets Annabelle again, who is also competing, and Zane Cooper, a former Marshal (James Garner, the original Maverick from the TV show this is based on) who will be supervising the game.

The stagecoach driver dies, stranding the three of them. In another scene cut out of this parody, they run into a town that was looted by robbers pretending to be Indians and promise to get it back. After doing so, they run into a real Indian tribe and Maverick sacrifices himself.

The tribesmen are actually friends of Maverick and only pretending to be warriors, and after Maverick has gone with them their leader Joseph (Graham Greene) tells Maverick they're putting on the phony front for a Russian Duke. They win the rest of the money Maverick needs by “letting” the Duke kill Maverick, disguised as one of the tribe, for sport, counting on the fact that he's a bad shot.

After getting out of that scrape, Maverick is then captured by other gamblers making sure he won't make it to the game and he manages to escape (yet another scene not used here), making it to the riverboat where the game is supervised by Cooper and the Captain of the ship Lauren Belle is Commodore Duvall (James Coburn). During an hour break, Maverick and Annabelle do it, and someone locks him in his room, which he gets out of and gets back to the game in time.

Maverick wins the game and in scenes where everyone double crosses one another, Cooper, the only one allowed to have a gun, holds up the boat and leaves with the money. Duvall goes to chase after him and it turns out he was in on the robbery. Maverick finds them in the woods and leaves with it, leaving them alone to fight. When Maverick is settled with his winnings and is taking a bath and is found and held up by Cooper, then it is revealed they were father and son all along. As they're bonding in tubs, Annabelle finds them and holds them up, and after she leaves, Maverick says she only left with half of the money and had the rest hidden in his boots.

Danny Glover did have a cameo earlier as a bank robber, though he didn't use the “I'm getting too old for this shit” line from the Lethal Weapon movies. There are cameos throughout the movie by Dan Hedaya, Margot Kidder, Corey Feldman, and others)


From The Mask Goes to The Cineplex in Cracked #294, November 1994, art by John Severin.

Starting in the last third during the riverboat gambling part, cheaters are thrown off the boat. Maverick says earlier he can see other players' “tells”.

The article was about Jim Carrey's character from The Mask going from theater to theater seeing different movies. It's Carrey in the last panel with his mask torn off.

When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, he said it was to impress Jodie Foster (though he was a pedophile and liked her as a minor). NYPD Blue was famous for being a network TV show with nudity. Maverick's character was established as a self-admitted coward.