MUCK AND MUNDANE

MORK AND MINDY
1978-1982 ABC

Welcome to the second of five days of Mork. Yesterday we had the MAD, Bananas, and Sick versions, the first Cracked one, and another Crazy cover, all of which can be seen by clicking the “Older Posts” button below. Here are some more.

MUCK AND MUNDANE
Crazy #51, June 1979
w & a: Murad Gumen

This cover was one brush with celebrity a few years ago, when I posted this cover to Twitter, it was forwarded, and eventually got to Marie Osmond, who retweeted it to her followers, with the comment “those were the days” and hundreds of 'like's forwarded back to me, which I had to turn off because they kept coming weeks after. The others in this picture are Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta from Grease. The artist obviously hadn't seen the show and was working from black and white publicity stills, otherwise he would have gotten the colors of Mork's striped shirt right.

In case you didn't know, Mork and Mindy was a sitcom about Mork (Robin Williams), an alien from Ork, sent to Earth to report about it. He's discovered by Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) and lives in her attic. He has a hard time adjusting to Earthling ways, not getting metaphors and sitting in furniture upside-down among other eccentricities. He sprinkles his dialogue with Orkan language saying words like “Nanoo Nanoo” and “Shazbot”. All the while he has to hide that he's from space from most people.

The men from the Air Force are Casey Swaim and Edward Winter from Project UFO.

In the background of the third panel is Dan Aykroyd as a Conehead from Saturday Night Live. The panel after that has Mork's friend Eugene (Jeffrey Jacquet). Mindy's father Fred (Conrad Janis) and grandmother Cora (Elizabeth Kerr) own a music store. Fred objects to Mork living with Mindy thinking they're engaged, but later in the series he finds out Mork's an alien.

Cora is the hip and sassy one and has no problem with Mork and Mindy's living arrangement.

The police captain is Barney Miller. It looks like George C. Scott in the next to last panel but sometimes it's hard to tell.

The show was often compared to the earlier Ray Walston sitcom My Favorite Martian. At the end of every show, Mork would report what he learned that week to Orson (Ralph James), his boss on Ork that you never saw on camera.

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF MORK AND MINDY
Cracked #161, August 1979
a: John Severin

Cracked's spoofs were less like parodies and more like fan-fiction. Here are two of many parodies they did of the show. They always had a roster of about five TV shows they would either rotate or combine.When they did Mork and Mindy it was so much less like a parody that they didn't bother changing the names.

Mork drinking through his fingers was one of the alien traits the program would use.

Eugene was a violin student at the record store.

Mork came to Earth in a spacaship that was an egg.

Cameo appearance by Judd Hirsch from Taxi. The show used the fact that as a comedian and actor, Robin Williams was always “on”.

THE RETURN OF MORK AND MINDY
Cracked #163, October 1979
a: John Severin

Like I said, often they'd combine shows to help sell more copies. They did Diff'rent Strokes here too, a sitcom about Arnold (Gary Coleman), a boy adopted by Mr. Drummond (Conrad Bain).

That's not all! The third part of five will be tomorrow!