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

BLECHHULA

BLACULA (1972)
dir: William Crain

BLECHHULA
Spoof #4, March 1973
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Marie Severin & Winslow Mortimer

One of the main genres of the 70s the blaxploitation craze, which began with Cotton Comes to Harlem and Sweet Sweetback's Baaadasssss Song, continuing with film franchises usually centering on one character, like Shaft, Black Caesar, and Cleopatra Jones.

A subset of this was blaxploitation horror, black versions of established characters. There was Blacula, Blackenstein, Abby (The Exorcist), Dr. Black and Mr. White. I'm loath to say anything is “the black version” of something, but this is how they were advertised, so I'm not saying something that hasn't already been said.

As far as I know, this was the only blaxploitation horror movie that was parodied.


There's also a parody of Marcus Welby, M. D. in this issue of Spoof that we'll get to.

(Barnabas was another vampire on Dark Shadows, which we'll also get to.


It begins with a prince visiting Count Dracula 100 years earlier...

...and being bitten by him.

In the present time, a gay couple is buying antiques to bring back to America. In the movie the black man in the couple is played by a white man, I can't figure out why. Prince Mamuwalde a/k/a Blacula (William Marshall) comes back to life out of the coffin. He bites the white man (the real one).

Now loose in the city, Blacula spots a young woman named Tina (Vonetta McGee) who he believes is the reincarnation of his wife and she thinks is a stalker. He chases her and gets hit by a cab and bites the driver.

After chasing Tina into a nightclub (there's a long musical number cut out of this), where she was to meet her sister Michelle (Denise Nicholas) and her boyfriend (Thalmus Rasulala). Tina falls for Blacula and a waitress takes a picture of them. Later when the waitress is at home developing the photo, she discovers that he doesn't appear in the picture.

This wasn't the first, there was also a sequel.

177-SICK

1776(1972)
dir: Peter H. Hunt

177-SICK
SPOOF #5, May 1973
w: Marv Wolfman
a: Win Mortimer

Spoof was Marvel's attempt at a parody comic in between Not Brand Ecch and Crazy.

If you were alive then, you remember for a few years everyone cashing in on the bicentennial of the country for several years, you couldn't go anywhere without seeing stars and stripes on something. (Hold on to your seats, things are about to get worse for the 250th).

I mean everything.

I trace the beginning of 1776-sploitaition to this movie, a three hour musical about our founding.

Who knows if they saw the movie.

I only recognize Nixon and Agnew in the audience. Not sure who the other two politicians are.

UPDATE:


177♪
Sick #95, September 1973
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Tony Tallarico

They missed out on the perfect opportunity to call this 177-Sick. I tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen to a three-year-old. The artist Tony Tallarico did an adaptation of the actual movie for Charlton Publications, which would eventually acquire Sick and by that point he was too expensive for them.

This was the actual comic. It wasn't that funny. Intentionally, that is.