Crazy #81 - Marvel

Dec. 1981 - "The magazine that dares to be dumb!"

As I've mentioned once or twice before, Crazy was one of those magazines that would have been perfect for me. I was around nine or ten when issues like this came out, and its humor, since it leaned more towards superhero parodies (being produced as it was by Marvel Comics), was right up my alley.

But for some reason, I can never remember seeing hardly any issues of the series at my local newsstands. There was always Mad, most of the time Cracked, but I almost never saw Crazy. Not sure why that was, but I'm sure if I had seen it for sale at the time, I would've picked it up, especially issues with covers like this!

When searching on eBay for an issue of Crazy to read, I couldn't pass up a Marvel book parodying a DC character. Little did I know the spoof, titled Sooperman, Too!, was written by none other than DC stalwart, Paul Kupperberg!:

At only six pages, this story moves at a lightning fast pace. And there are a couple of moments that actually made me laugh out loud, even all these years later.

Marvel had the advantage of putting some of their regular people on Crazy, who turned out spectacular work. A good example of that is "Teen Hulk!" by Jim Owsley and Bob McLeod:

McLeod's work here is just beautiful, with just enough cartooniness to make the humor work.

There's another installment of "Dirk McGirk", the intellectually-challenged (but indefatigable) fifth grader by Mike Carlin. Following that is "If They Were Alive Today", by Dick Codor, who has famous women from history in modern times.

Most of the jokes are silly, of course, but the final page of the strip features some interesting social and political commentary that sort of sneaks up on you:

...I simply love this last panel; with the rich M.D. being driven by in a limo, while Florence Nightengale tends to those with real needs.

There's "Auntie Nuke", by Susan Bissett and Steve Smallwood, who does a nice job on the art:

There's also "Crazy Looks At Trick or Treating", "The Kinetic Kids" by Steve Mellor (which is two pages you flip back and forth and note the changes; sort Crazy's version of the Mad Fold-In), a fumetti feature called "Night of the Living Hand!", and "Great Poems Shortened Into Limericks".

This being Crazy, there's always an appearance by Obnoxio The Clown:

There's a couple more one or two page strips, ending with a "traditional" TV/movie parody; in this case "M*U*S*H In Vietnam" by Murad Gumen(?) and Kent Gamble:

Being a big M*A*S*H fan, I have to admit I didn't laugh too much at the jokes, but man the artwork by Gamble is really nice: well drawn, beautiful to look at, but also funny and featuring superb caricatures.

On the inside back cover, Mike Carlin gets another page to his own with the appropriately-titled "Mike Carlin's Page O'Stuff":

I bought this magazine on eBay for around $1.50, a good deal---there's a lot of solid material in here, and I'm really sorry I didn't discover this when I was ten: I would've loved it.