ODD SQUAD

MOD SQUAD
1968-1973 ABC

ODD SQUAD
MAD #127. June 1969
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

The premise of this show was that three runaway youths, Pete Cochran (Michael Cole), Linc Hayes (Clarence Williams III), and Julie Barnes (Peggy Lipton), were taken under the wing of Capt. Adam Greer (Tige Andrews). They were arrested for various offenses and Andrews let them serve their time by being undercover cops.

This was Jack Rickard's marker rough for that cover.

From Talking Animals Take Over TV in Cracked #91, March 1971. Art by John Severin.

CLOD SQUAD
Sick #66, March 1969
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Bill Robinson

Apologies in advance for another watermelon joke, which kind of redeems itself with yet another George Wallace joke. These guys were really obsessed with George Wallace.

CLOD SQUAD
Spoof #1, October 1970
w: Len Wein
a: Marie Severin

In the foreground of the party is William F. Buckley referring to Gore Vidal.

MORBID DICK

MOBY DICK (1956)
dir: John Huston

MORBID DICK
MAD #30, December 1956
w: Al Feldstein
a: Wallace Wood

Before MAD did movie parodies in comics form they did them as reviews. Here's their parody of Moby Dick. It begins wish Ishmael (Richard Basehart), who we all know narrated the Herman Melville novel, and Queeqeg (Fredrich von Ledebur) joining the crew of the Peqoud, led by Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck). Father Mapple is played by Orson Welles.

Starbuck is played by Leo Genn. Barry Fitzgerald was another actor was was just another actoor, not a teen idol. There he is pictured in that panel.

Readers should be familiar with Captain Ahab's obsession with Moby Dick.

I guess the model for Moby Dick was kind of the Bruce the mechanical shark of its time, before that were the animations of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien, and after Bruce was just CGI.

MISTER ROGERS PACIFIES THE UNIVERSE

MISTER ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD
PBS 1968-2001

Fred Rogers has always been the epitome of niceness and innocence. The persona he used on his show for more than two generations was not just a character, though. Herewith are a few examples of how he was used.

MR. ROGERS PACIFIES THE UNIVERSE
Crazy #65, August 1980
w & a: Dave Morris

The man running the show is supposed to be music producer Don Kirschner. The audience is all adults for some reason, though if Mr. Rogers were still alive now and doing shows like this he would have an adult audience, but they'd be there for nostalgic reasons.

When Carter (who was the Mister Rogers of Presidents) was President, comedians liked to joke about his family.

'Spa Fon' and 'Squa Tront' were originally used words by aliens in EC comics and have since been borrowed by at least three generations of cartoonists.

From Kustom Kars of the Stars also by Dave Morris, in Crazy #63, June 1980.

MR. JOLLY ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD VISITS A LOCAL BANK
MAD #227, December 1986
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres

Uncle Floyd was more of a parody of a childrens' show in the way Pee-Wee Herman was. The framed picture on his wall was called the 'Picture Picture' because it was also used to show movies. In the bottom two panels are Mr. Rogers puppets Lady Elaine Fairchild and King Friday XIII. On his show there was a trolley that would take viewers from his house to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

X the Owl was another of Mr. Rogers' puppets.

A poster on the wall refers to Mr. McFeely, a postman from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

Eddie Murphy had a recurring character on Saturday Night Live called Mister Robinson's Neighborhood. Though the sketches pushed the limits of what was allowed on television and Mr. Rogers was a known voice of morality, he said publicly more than once he enjoyed these sketches. Rationale was that unlike other parodies where the joke was that the Mr. Rogers persona was all an act, Eddie Murphy got what the show was about and was just doing the show in a different context.

THE MISERY BREAKS

THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976)
dir: Arthur Penn

THE MISERY BREAKS
MAD #188, January 1977
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres

Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson) is a rustler experiencing hard times. His gang and he are particularly upset by the hanging of a friend of theirs by Braxton (John McLiam), a land baron, who takes the law into his own hands. They decide to seek vengeance against Braxton by killing his foreman Pete Marker (Richard Bradford), hanging him from the same tree that Braxton and his men hanged their friend. Logan and his gang then buy a small farm close to Braxton's ranch with money they stole during a train robbery, and begin rustling his stock. First the gang, without Logan, rides across the Missouri River and north of the border into Canada to steal horses belonging to the police. The theft initially goes well, until the police catch up to the gang, forcing them to abandon the stolen horses and flee for their lives. In their absence, Logan plants crops and enters into a relationship with Braxton's aggressive, virginal daughter, Jane (Kathleen Lloyd).

Braxton is incensed with both his rustling problem and his daughter, and sends for Robert E. Lee Clayton (Marlon Brando), a notorious Irish-American "regulator", who for a price, will take care of rustlers personally. Quickly suspicious of Logan, who does not strike him as a farmer, Clayton dons a variety of disguises and begins to pick off Logan's gang, one by one.

Clayton shoots Si (John Ryan) as he is trying to have sex with a farmer's adulterous wife. He also shoots Cary (Frederic Forrest) after he enters an outhouse. Finally, Clayton arrives at the gang's hideout one night and sets fire to the house, forcing a burning Cal (Harry Dean Stanton) to run to the river and throw himself in to extinguish the flames. He asks Cal where Logan is, and Cal says he was in the house but refused to come out. Clayton then impales Cal through his right eye with a large throwing star. Logan arrives the next morning, and sadly buries Cal. A few nights later, Clayton is serenading his horse by campfire light. Once the campfire goes dark and Clayton falls asleep, Logan sneaks into his camp and slits his throat. Logan then comes after Braxton, who has been feigning a trance due to shock. But, at an opportune time, Braxton pulls a gun on Logan and attempts to kill him. Logan gets the upper hand and shoots Braxton in the chest, killing him.

WISHIN' FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)
dir: Brian DePalma

WISHIN' FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE
MAD #347, July 1996
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

This begins like the TV show it was based on with Impossible Mission Forces agent Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) looking at the dossier and listening to a recording telling him what his mission will entail before the dossier self-destructs. His latest mission, as told by his supervisor Eugene Ketteridge, is to stop Alexander Golitsyn, a rogue IMF agent, from selling a copy of the CIA's NOC list to an illegal arms dealer.

The kids are referring to Joe Buck, a role Voight played in Midnight Cowboy. He also starred in Deliverance, which is referred to on the envelope. On the wings is the apteryx, a bird used as a side gag for years in MAD, the joke being that in reality it is flightless.

The team is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Claire Phelps (Emmanuele Beart), Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez), and Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas). They are to execute their mission at a party at the Russian embassy. Jack gives Ethan an explosive shaped like gum, which will be exposition for a later scene.

Everybody is killed off in the mission except Ethan, who gets a call from Ketteridge (Henry Czerny), who asks how things are going, and arranges to meet him at a local restaurant. Unbeknownst to them, their mission was part of different mission to ferret out a mole within the IMF working under the name 'Job 314'. Since Ethan is the only surviving member, Ketteridge suspects he is the one, and sets up Ethan's parents for crimes to get him to turn himself in. Ethan flees before he can be taken into custody by throwing the explosive gum at a fishtank in the restaurant (not shown here). In his sanctuary, Ethan searches for clues as to who 'Job 314' is, eventually realizing the name is from a verse in The Book of Job in the bible, which leads him to Max (Vanessa Redgrave), the arms dealer who bought the NOC list. He believes it to be bogus and arranges to get the real one for her in exchange for money to assemble a team.

The picture on Redgrave's desk is of Yassir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which she was famous for sympathizing with.

Claire turns out to have been alive after all, having survived the car-bombing, tipped off in advance by her husband. Ethan sets up a new team on his own to clear his name. With the help of blacklisted IMF agents Stickell and Krieger (Ving Rhames, Jean Reno), they break into CIA's Langley headquarters disguised as firefighters and getting the actual NOC list. Jim Phelps shows up and turns out to still be alive, and says Ketteridge is the mole.

Ratso was Joe Buck's friend in Midnight Cowboy.

There is a big fight scene taking place in the Chunnel from London to Paris, involving Hunt being chased by Krieger in a helicopter down there and a rooftop fight on the TGV train, all to prevent the NOC (non-official cover) disc from being uploaded), which would reveal the mole, which is Phelps. Ethan uses the explosive gum again to lose the helicopter chasing him, and has secretly arranged for Ketterige to meet Max, putting the NOC list back in the hands of the CIA.

Cover for Mexican edition of MAD.

MISH MOSH: IMPLAUSIBLE
Cracked #310, September 1996
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan

The beginning of the movie shows the team finishing their previous mission as a set-up to what they do, similar to how the James Bond and Naked Gun movies begin (co-incidentally, there's Leslie Nielsen in the splash panel). Tom Cruise uses prosthetics in the prologue and Claire fakes death.

Spies and Saboteurs were Cracked's answer to MAD's marginals, here they're characters in the parody.

Fights on the rooftops of trains were not invented that decade, they've been around since the beginning of film. Coincidentally, one of the Mission:Impossible sequels was directed by John Woo, who did Broken Arrow.