"[I have confiscated] many issue of Mad, Cracked, and the occasional Crazy." - Principal Seymour SkinnerAs is usual with The Simpsons, that pretty much sums up Crazy's legacy, doesn't it? Most kids who grew up reading the above magazines usually bought Crazy when they either couldn't get the other two, or had a little money left over.
Not to suggest Crazy was bad or anything--in fact, when I bought this debut issue, I was surprised at the awesome talent Marvel had lined up for it--Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, Tony Isabella, Vaughn Bode, Harlan Ellison, Steve Skeates, Jean Shepherd(!), and Len Wein as writers, Ross Andru, Mike Ploog, Kelly Freas, Herb Trimpe, and Basil Wolverton doing the art! Wow!
We get "Kung Fooey" drawn by Mike Ploog, a one-page team-up called "Breaking and Entering Pandora's Box" of Ellison and Wolverton, a segment called "The Daily Survivor" which pre-dates The Onion by a few decades, a fumetti starring Roy Thomas, and another starring Dick Giordano and Neal Adams!
There's also Mad-esque shots at the auto industry, cigarettes, a parody of The Poseidon Adventure, Bob Foster's "Moosekind" strip, and another fumetti--this time called "Foom-etti"--starring Marv Wolfman, photographed by Vince Colletta!
You can feel some of the Marvel regulars really having fun cutting loose here, and there is some genuinely funny stuff in this first issue. Like a lot of Mad's competitors, they were aiming for an audience just slightly older than Mad. Considering Crazy ran over ten years, it's clear the magazine was fairly successful financially as well as creatively.
1 comment:
To me, Crazy was kind of like when your mom bought no name Oreo cookies. They did the same job but something was missing.
I found the book got dark with "Obnoxio" and it wasn't all that funny.
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