YELLOWSTREAK

YELLOWSTREAK
MAD UK #247, November 1982
a: Dave Stoten

A lot of TV detective spoofs of the seventies put all the detectives together, usually because the premise was the detective had some kind of gimmick or trait. This is supposed to by about this premise taken to its most absurd conclusion as a detective called Yellowstreak, who's supposed to be Orson Welles as all their traits combined.

This article seems to pre-date right-wing rancor against “woke” by forty years, lamenting how detectives used to be like Sam Spade, then TV made them disabled (Ironside, Raymond Burr), black (Shaft, Richard Roundtree), female (Police Woman, Angie Dickinson), fat (Cannon, William Conrad), streetsmart (Columbo, Peter Falk), and old (Barnaby Jones, Eddie Albert). McCloud is in the background of the splash panel as well.

Winifred Atwell was a jazz/ragtime musician. I have no idea why she's referenced here.

There are appearances by Quincy, Efrem Zimbalist and Roger Smith from 77 Sunset Strip, and Starsky & Hutch. There seems to be a picture of James Garner in Quincy's lab. In the last panel Orson Welles looks more like Tim Curry.

I'm familar with Karl Malden and Michael Douglas from Street of San Francisco and Robert Wagner from Hart to Hart, but I must say I'm stumped by the two in the same panel as with Kojak. They must be the only non-American detectives.

BARNACLE GROANS

BARNABY JONES
1973-1980 NBC

BARNACLE GROANS
MAD # 175, June 1975
w: Tom Koch
a: Angelo Torres

The premise was that Barnaby (Buddy Ebsen) was a retired detective, but after his son took over the business and was murdered he came back out of retirement and re-opened the agency with daughter-in-law Betty (Lee Merriweather). He talked in a drawl like his previous character Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies.

In this parody, they investigate the missing brother of Miss Overshaw in the unfriendly town of Dullsville.

Barnaby spoke with home-spun wisdom.

In case you didn't get it, he was old. And he was a teetotaler. And everybody in the town is mean.

And again, he's old.

After being chased onto the rooftops, he jumps across but doesn't make it. They pull him off the ledge but then try to finish him off.

Hubie Overshaw wasn't missing. He was killed because he was old. The town of Dullsville is so mean because they hate old people for making their taxes so high.

Barnaby is finally told he doesn't have to work. He can just collect social security. You see, he's old.


In the later seasons, they added his nephew Jedidiah (Mark Shera) so Buddy Ebsen would have less work, but MAD gave him his own series in the article TV Spinoffs Yet to Come in #206, April 1979, by Tom Koch and Harry North, Esq.