The Legendary Comix Ripoff Ruse
Somewhere between Capp and the eight-pagers lie the comic parodies that crop up from time to time in college humor magazines. Although they are not always obvious tracings their visual appeal usually leaves something to be desired. They are often vulgar and occasionally bawdy but they never have the outright sexual frankness of the eight-pagers.
The Legendary Comix Ripoff Ruse
Somewhere between Capp and the eight-pagers lie the comic parodies that crop up from time to time in college humor magazines. Although they are not always obvious tracings their visual appeal usually leaves something to be desired. They are often vulgar and occasionally bawdy but they never have the outright sexual frankness of the eight-pagers. None-the-less their increasing popularity was recognized by Harvey Kurtzman, editor of Mad comics. At first Mad did comic take offs on old movies and other television stuff. In issue number four, Wallace Wood did a story featuring Superduperman and Capt. Marbles fighting it out for the super hero championship. From then on Kurtzman had Wood lampoon at least one famous comic series in each issue of Mad . Wood tended toward two fisted action strips like Black and Blue Hawks, Teddy And The Pirates, Bat Boy and Rubin, and Little Orphan Melvin. His approach was the same as Al Capp’s. He rendered the entire strip he was ripping off into his own style, which is considerable. In Mad 10, Bill Elder switched from doing movie/TV parodies to comic rip-offs. His first effort Woman Wonder didn’t have much of a premise, but it showed Elder to be the world’s greatest cop-artist. Like the eight-pagers he used exact replicas of the characters he was ripping-off. These characters and their supporting paraphernalia would exist in a “real world” of Elder’s innocuous backgrounds. In this format the reader once again got a behind the scenes point of view. In Mickey Rodent you could really believe that you were watching Mickey and Donald daw away at each other over who was the top character in Disneyland. Starchie depicts the whole Riverdale gang trying to deal with real teenage life in a large city. (Betty put out and carried reefers in her purse). Eventually Elder got so carried away he would rip-off characters from several comics and put them in the same story. Mickey Rodent showed up on Howdy Dooit. Little Orphan Annie mistook Jiggs for Daddy Warbucks in Bringing Back Father. And, in his more remarkable effort Poopeye, Mammy Jokeum, Melvin of the Apes, and Superduperman are all hired by a cigar chomping Swee’back (Sweetpea) to get rid of Poopeye so he can take over the strip.
