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Welcome to another interview at All In Black & White For 75 Cents!
While Paul Kupperberg is mostly known from his work at DC Comics (where he's written almost every character they have to offer, including some of his own creations), he did so some work "across the street" at Marvel, almost entirely in their black and white magazine line.
I've interviewed Paul a number of times before, for both my Aquaman Shrine and I Am The Phantom Stranger blogs, so when I saw his name in issues of Crazy and Savage Sword of Conan, I couldn't resist pestering him again for an All In Black & White For 75 Cents interview. Paul, gracious as ever, agreed:
All In Black and White: How did you end up writing pieces for Crazy?
Paul Kupperberg: That was a case of guilt by association, i.e. with my brother, Alan. He'd been drawing for Crazy for a while, for editor Paul Laikin who, if memory serves me, had been a stand-up comedian and writer for Mad in the 1950s. This was 1977, the summer of Star Wars...or should I say "Star Warts" and, for reasons which elude me now, Alan got me the gig writing the movie parody thereof, which appeared in the December 1977 issue (#32), which means it had been published in September or October, with the parody itself dated 7-7-77. I don't remember why Alan didn't write it. He's pretty funny himself, but, whatever the reason, he got me into Crazy to write the script.
That wasn't my first published work in Crazy, though, just the first with my name on it! A couple of years before, I had co-written with my friends Duffy Vohland, whose gig it actually was, and Roger Klorese, the letters page for the 1975 Crazy Super Special. It was full of stuff like "Dear Sirs, Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he had turned into a giant bug. Sincerely, F. Kafka," followed by a rejection notice from the editor.
After that, I did a parodies of TV show, What's Happening? ("Waats Happening?", #33), M*A*S*H ("M*U*S*H", #35), and Eight Is Enough ("Eight? Enough! Enough!", #45), also for Laikin, and that was all I wrote, until #63, after Larry Hama took over as editor, when I parodied Apocalypse Now ("Apocrypha Nowland"). After that, I was in for the long haul and continued writing for them almost to the bitter end, with the E.T. parody ("E.Z.", #93) in the penultimate issue. I also wrote the "Crazy Looks At" feature, which was the centerspread in most, if not all issues between #63 and #84, drawn by Ned Sonntag. "Crazy Looks at Assembly"...or Lunch Period, or Sandlot Baseball, or the Super Bowl, whatever, with about twelve or fifteen gags spread across it.
B/W: How much research did you/could you do for the movie parodies? Would you actually go to the effort of seeing the movie first, so you could be more familiar with the material?
PK: Absolutely. I had to see the movies...nobody was giving Crazy Magazine advanced screenings or scripts. I had to wait until a movie hit the theaters, than Larry and I would talk about what was out there that had legs, that would still be on the reader's mind three or four months down the road when, the movie was out of the theaters. This was in the early days of VCRs, so movies didn't find an immediate second life on mass produced DVDs, or even on cable TV, which wasn't so widespread, way back then. I would go into the theater with a pad and pen and tale extensive notes, as much dialog as I could scrawl in the dark along with the plot and names, etc., and then take it all home and try to make something funny happen.
There were some wacky experiences with that. Again, we're predating multiplexes, and some films didn't play that wide, or we got to them late in their runs. One movie like that was Kubrick's The Shining. Now, I'm no Stephen King fan to begin with, so I wasn't thrilled with the choice of movie, but it was mitigated by this being a Kubrick film. What tipped the balance against this for me, now and forever, was that I saw it in the Chicago Theater in downtown Chicago, by then current city of residence. This was somewhat before the Chicago was rehabbed and returned to the movie palace splendor it enjoys today. Back then, it was a shithole, complete with rats that ran back and forth across your feet.
Sometimes we made a bad call and knew it early enough to catch it before the script was drawn. Pennies From Heaven, which was a brilliant fantasy noir British TV miniseries by writer Dennis Potter, was made into an American film, starring Steve Martin. The story integrates 1930s period pop music in a dark murder mystery and is, in fact, not so bad a movie, although nowhere near as good as the original miniseries, starring Bob Hoskins. Anyway, I wrote the script, complete with parodies of several of the 1930s songs before we realized the movie was going to tank, so I scrambled and wrote a second script to replace it. I don't recall what the replacement movie was or if it did any better at the box office than Pennies From Heaven would have.
We also trashed the script for a combo-parody of Warren Beatty's Reds and Ghost Story. We also took a shot at Whose Life Is It Anyway?, as a coming attraction. Not a winning combo, we decided.B/W: Would you write every single gag (of which there are dozens per page) in the Crazy material, or were the artists free to throw stuff in?
PK: The artists were free and welcome to throw in sight gags galore. Bob Camp, who drew a lot of my movie parodies, was great at that. I did write full scripts, complete with some sight gags, but mostly I was responsible for the main action in the panel and, of course, the dialog.
And we had a fairly strong model that we were working off of for all these stories. Crazy's parodies were straight-up riffs on the Mad Magazine model, based mostly on what Dick DeBartolo and Mort Drucker were then currently doing. I'd been reading Mad Magazine literally all my life, the magazine and the Ballantine paperback reprints of the comic book Mad published just a few years before my time, and I was infused with that stuff. Kurtzman, Elder, Wood, Drucker were my first comedy gods, and being a mid-20th century middle-class Brooklyn, New York Jew, I was exposed to all the chicken fat comedy that they represented, from the 78 RPM recordings of "Cohen on the Telephone" to Mickey Katz (Joel Gray's father, a Yiddish-song parodist) to Alan Sherman and the whole troop of Borscht Belt comedians.
With my strong preference for the older material, the first 23 issues in the comic book format (to this day, I own it in reprint form in at least seven different formats), I naturally started to gravitate to the more schmaltzy humor, culminating in an embarrassment of borderline plagiarism, or what we in publishing like to call an "homage", with the parody of American Gigolo ("American Giggler", #68). I was lifting characters and schtick right out of my favorite old Kurtzman stories, like the parody he did with Elder of Dragnet...Gary Hallgren was the artist and he went the whole nine yards with me, including his own "homage" to Elder's caricature of Dragnet's Joe Friday, as the cop chasing the Richard Gere character (complete with Elder's brass band tooting the Dragnet theme song)! It was shameless and I wouldn't change a panel...but I did pull back a little after that.B/W: Your parody of Superman II in Crazy #81 seems almost like a meta joke: a DC writer writing a Superman parody for a Marvel comic. Did this have anything to do with you getting that particular assignment?
PK: Nope, Superman II just happened to be the next movie to come along needing parodying. What is funny about it is, that on top of being a DC writer writing a Superman parody for a Marvel comic, I was also, at the time, on staff at DC Comics, working as the company's publicity director. I'd been given a special dispensation to continue writing for Crazy on the technicality that Crazy didn't directly compete with any DC publication, so my writing for them was "overlooked." At better than twice my regular page rate at DC in those days, I needed to hang on to that particular gig.B/W: How did writing straight-up humor material compare to writing superheroes, or fantasy, or war comics? Was it harder/easier? Could you "force" yourself to write funny on deadline?
PK: I love writing humor. I don't have to force myself to write funny. It's easy for me, especially if that’s the day's assignment. I think funny, as in both "humorously" and "odd." My biggest trouble isn't finding funny things to write or say, it's censoring myself from saying the funny but massively inappropriate things that flash through my head 24/7. There ain't nothing I can't find humor in. I've just learned to keep most of it to myself.
A lot of my comics writing output these days is for humor comics, including stories for Bongo's Bart Simpson Comics, DC's Scooby Doo, and a variety of Archie Comics. In a single work session, I can turn out twice as many pages of humor comics than I can of dramatic stuff. The hardest thing about humor isn't the writing so much as it is the editing. Less is more, and too many words and distractions blunt the funny.B/W: How did you come to write the "The Face of God" story for Savage Sword of Conan?
PK: I was desperate for work and pitching everyone I could think of. Due to circumstances that have no relevance to this topic but will play heavily in any interview I ever give should you start a "Scumbags in Comics" blog, I went from several books a month of writing at DC to none, so I called around Marvel and made contact with Mike Rockwitz, who was editing, among other things, Savage Sword of Conan. We talked about the possibility of several superhero projects (I wrote a pitch for a new Luke Cage/Iron Fist series that went nowhere), but the only immediate work he could offer without going through the pitching process was SSOC. I sent him a few story pitches and he chose "The Face of God." It was the only sale I made to him because a few months later, I was back on staff at DC, this time as an editor, a job I held from 1991 to 2006.B/W: "The Face of God" seems to fit squarely in the tradition of writing about contemporary-and-controversial issues (in this case, religion) but "hiding" it behind a layer of fantasy or science fiction. Did you feel the need to address the topic this way since you couldn't--or it would be a lot dicier, at least--if you were writing characters in modern day?
PK: I don't have a particular problem addressing any topic head-on. I was agnostic back then so I may have tempered my approach. These days, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and getting more militant and vocal about it the older I get, which is either a case of having the courage of my convictions or once again shooting off my big mouth.
And, frankly, I doubt I was making any big political statement. Most likely I was looking for an angle with which to carve out a story. Since primitive religion plays such an important part in Conan, it was probably just an easy way to throw him into the resultant intrigue and violence.B/W: It's too bad you only wrote that one Conan piece. I thought it was a great tale--something a little different but still had most of the elements of a classic Conan adventure (fighting, wenching, bucking authority, etc.). I would have loved to have read more Conan from you.
PK: It was mostly the timing, mentioned before. Marvel was always a hard nut for me to crack. Although I never really tried that hard. I was and remain a DC fan at heart. Much as I love those first 15 years or so of Stan and Roy's (editorially speaking) Marvel, I'm a Weisinger-Superman boy, heart and soul! I came to DC young, before I have any memory of not having any memory of comics, via their kinder, gentler and corporately cleaner comics like Sheldon Moldoff's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas Specials and the storybook fairy-tales of Wonder Woman by Kanigher, Andru and Esposito.
But I loved Conan. I'm a 1960s comic book fanboy, so I grew up reading Robert E. Howard before Marvel optioned him, along with the Ace editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs with the Frazetta covers, and all the sword and sorcery and barbarian imitators.
I'd like to think it's a professional thing. Gimme a genre or character and I should be able to come up with a story for it/them. My experience writing humor before Crazy was practically nil. Post-Crazy, I didn't do much at all until 1999, when I wrote a Flintstone story for Kevin Dooley for The Flintstones & The Jetsons #18. Now, this was an idea I'd pitched at Charlton Comics in 1975 when they had the Flintstones license, for a story about Fred's admiration for the great detective Sherock Stones, but I loved it so much I remembered it twenty-four years later when Kevin asked me to pitch. After that, I wrote a Jetsons story, and all of a sudden, I was on to a bunch of Cartoon Network characters, including Johnny Bravo, I.M. Weasel, Ed, Edd & Eddy, Scooby Doo and others. In 2005, I became a regular contributor to Weekly World News, then its executive editor, and followed that with a humor book, Jew-Jitsu: the Hebrew Hands of Fury.
One of my current clients is Dalmatian Press, for whom I write coloring books, including those based on DreamWorks properties like Penguins of Madagascar and Megamind (their Christmas 2010 picture). When it's time to write a coloring book, I click the 'coloring book' switch and get into that mode. I'm also currently working on a quarterly Captain Action Classified comic, an issue of a Honey West comic, a short story for a second Avenger anthology from Moonstone, miscellaneous short stories for Archie Comics, Bongo Comics, and Scooby Doo, as well as two monthly comics for Archie, Life With Archie: Archie the Married Life, which is a magazine featuring two 24-page stories a month (penciled by fellow DC Comics alumnus, Norm Breyfogle), imaginary stories set in a Melrose Place-soap opera several years in the future of the Archie characters, one in which he's married to Betty, the other to Veronica. Every one of them is very different from the other, but I have rent to pay and groceries to buy. As Hunter S. Thompson said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." In the freelance life, the going is always weird.Its always fun getting a chance to talk to Paul Kupperberg--he's written so many different characters for so many different companies in so many different formats that his name always seems to pop up, no matter what blog I'm working on. Thanks Paul!
Jan. 1991 - "The Face of God"
This issue of Savage Sword of Conan features an offbeat adventure for everyone's favorite barbarian, brought to you by Paul Kupperberg (him again!), Michael Docherty, and Ricardo Villagran.
Our story opens with Conan and a band of others fighting what seems to be a losing battle:
Conan's compatriots want to give up, but of course he's having none of it. He continues to fight like a demon, so long and so well that the leader of the other side, General Ganth gets involved.
But when he gets close, and sees Conan's face, he is startled by something. Instead of ordering Conan to be killed (ha! as if they could do it anyway), he simply whacks him on the back of the head, knocking him out.
Ganth and his men return to their home, the small city of Zamora. Ganth shows the trussed-up barbarian to the king, named Fhal. Fhal takes a look at Conan, too, and sees the same thing: Conan is the spitting image of a demi-god that Zamora worships, as seen on shield hanging in the royal palace!
We learn about the legend of the warrior Shan, who died in battle. As he ascended to Heaven (or the Hyborian Age equivalent), his spirit promised to look after Zamora and its people--and promising one day to return and lead Zamora to victory.
The plan is to introduce Conan to the unwashed masses of Zamora as Shan, mollifying the citizens who are increasingly unhappy with life under King Fhal. Conan wants no part of this, but when they offer him "a large quantity of gold", Conan decides to go along with the crazy plan...for the moment, at least.
After meeting the Royal Palace's priest, an elderly man eager to remain in his exalted place, Conan meets his followers:
To keep Conan's mollified, he's not just offered gold: a comely wench named Claea is sent to...keep Conan company, which she does.
Meanwhile, a small group of Zamorans are meeting in the dark of night, horrified at what they know is a charade. Their leader, Bren, promises to bring down King Fhal more than ever.
That same night, Conan decides to try and sneak out of the royal palace and wander into town. One of the small group of rebels sees him and calls his pals. They attack Conan, leading to many beheadings. Conan is about to run Bren through, but when he accuses Conan of being part of the evil ruling class, Conan walks away disgusted.
Unbeknownst to Conan, General Ganth had him followed, and after another knock on the head, he wakes up back in his gilded cage:
...I should stop for a moment to remark on the artwork by Docherty and Villagran. I'm not familiar with Mr. Docherty, but I've seen and enjoyed Villagran's work before. I love the amount of depth and detail in that panel above, with Ganth talking to Conan, with the priest and the wench watching.
Okay, anyway, later on, Bren and his men run into some of the army. Bren and his men hold their own, until some the army, perched from high up with bows and arrows, start slaughtering the rebels. As they run off, the army soldiers mock Bren and his fighters as "ignorant peasant offal." Conan notices this, and again walks away disgusted.
King Fhal is furious the rebels are making such brazen attacks, even though they fail. To win the people of Zamora over, he follows an idea proposed by Ganth--to conquer a neighboring city, just to show how powerful Zamora is. Everybody loves a winner.
Conan is dragged into this, and the battle with that city's army is nasty and bloody. Until something unbelievable happens: the skies begin to darken, followed by a bolt of lightning. Standing before all of them on the battlefield is...Shan!
Shan is mighty perturbed at how his name is used to justify all sorts of bad behavior, and starts bringing down some divine justice on Zamora--by immolating Zamora's soldiers, followed by General Ganth and King Fhal!
He then turns his attention on Conan who is not all that impressed:
Conan engages Shan, refusing to believe he is as powerful as he claims. He charges that Shan is only back on Earth to regain the unwavering belief of his people, since over the years he's been gone, it has begun to fade.
The remaining Zamorans, stunned they are watching Conan goe toe-to-toe with their God, start to question Shan's status, heeding Conan's words that Shan did nothing while they suffered under King Fhal.
Finally, Conan jams his sword into Shan's gut. A burst of lightning, followed by a scream, and Shan is gone. Conan and the Zamorans watch it all happen:
Conan is less than impressed with the Zamorans and their eagerness to claim him as their new god. He climbs aboard a steed, and rides off, but not before suggesting that Bren might be a good leader: "He's a hothead, but he has your city's interests at heart."
Conan believes he will be a king some day, but not in Zamora: "My destiny lies elsewhere."
There's a short second story, "The Rescue", by Dwight Jon Zimmerman and Tony DeZuniga:
"The Rescue", at eight pages, is fine but nothing outstanding. Some of the artwork is solid, some of it looks a little rushed. There's a lot of wash effects in it, giving it at least a nice visual contrast to the main story.
Before I read this issue, I talked to Paul Kupperberg (who has been a vocal supporter of my blogging efforts, granting me numerous interviews about his Aquaman and Phantom Stranger work), wondering how he came to write just this one issue of SSOC.
Paul told me to "be kind", and I joked that as long as the story had all the basic Conan story trappings--fighting, wenching, bucking authority, a giant monster--then I'd be happy.
Of course, this story does have all those things (except the giant monster), but nevertheless its not a typical Conan story, and one that I enjoyed thoroughly--Conan is recognizably Conan here, but he's thrown into an unusual situation, one that obviously has parallels to today. Ably drawn by Docherty and Villagran, this is a highly effective Conan adventure, one of the best ones I've read in a while.
Speaking of interviews, we'll be ending this new week of posts with a talk with Paul about his brief foray into the world of black and white mags, writing for Conan and Crazy. Be here tomorrow!
Oct. 1973 - "From the usual gang of idiots."
Ah, Mad magazine--I wish I could quit you.
Actually, I don't. I love finding an old, cheap issue of Mad on eBay and exploring the treasures I find inside. Like Conan stories, you know what you're going to get, you just don't know the exact proportions. And that's kind of comforting sometimes.
This issue's first parody is of The Heartbreak Kid, called "The Heartburn Kid", drawn by the incomparable Mort Drucker:
There are some panels here where the linework and devotion to detail are simply startling. Its amazing to me Drucker would put this much work into a silly movie parody, but maybe that's what gives this pieces like this such a classic feel:
Following this, there's "The Mad Motorists Guide to American Wildlife", "One Morning At A Bus Depot" by Don Martin, "Fortune Cookies That Are Relevant", and "You Know It's Really Summer When...", again featuring beautiful artwork, in this case by Jack Rickard:
Then there's another installment of "Spy Vs. Spy", "The Lighter Side of...Crime in the Streets", more Don Martin, then "Magazines for Neglected Sports", drawn by the master, Jack Davis:
...the funny thing is, most of these magazines exist today.
Following this, there's "Old Standards Rewritten For The Liberated Woman", then "Mad's Summer Camp Owner of the Year", drawn by one of my favorites, Paul Coker:
There's more Don Martin, "A Mad City Street Scene We'd Like To See", followed by one more parody, drawn by Angelo Torres:
On the inside cover there's, of course, The Mad Fold-In, and the whole thing is topped off with this timely back cover gag:
Sure, it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but that's not what you buy Mad for!
Aug. 1981 - "The magazine that dares to be dumb!"
Yes, we're back with another issue of Crazy. Two issues of the same magazine in one week? Yes, and all I can say is trust me; I have a method to my madness.
This issue opens with the movie parody "Peepeye" by Paul Kupperberg and Bob Camp:
...in many ways, I enjoyed this more than the actual movie. But I digress.
Kovacs is back with another one-page gag strip, followed by another adventure starring Teen Hulk:
Following that is another fumetti segment, starring...Neal Adams?!?:
...yes, this fumetti section features the legendary Mr. Adams, and his family, in a goofy little adventure.
After that is "Mother Goose's Rejected Nursery Rhymes", "New Inventions of Modern Science", "Crazy Looks At The Drive-In Movie" (also written by Paul Kupperberg), and "The Kinetic Kids" by Steve Mellor.
Howard the Duck makes another appearance, by Steve Skeates and Pat Broderick:
Following that is another installment with Obnoxio the Clown, "The Eleventh Hour Special" (goofs on current musicians like Queen and Elvis Costello, told entirely in rhyme), and then a final parody, "The Love Bore", by Murad Gumen and Kent Gamble.
On the inside cover, Mike Carlin gives up his patented "Page O' Stuff":
Not quite as solid an issue as the one talked about earlier in the week, but still not bad. I'm struck by the general diversity of material found in any given issue of Crazy, and that is definitely on display here.
1980 - "Here is at last, the Super Heroes magazine you've all been waiting for!"
This is the debut issue of Egmont's The Super Heroes Monthly series, featuring reprints of some of DC's best material, topped off by all-new covers, which in 1980 were breathtaking in their realism.
This issue's cover is by Alan Craddock, who would go on to do a number of them for the series. As you might expect, this first issue focuses on the Big Three, featuring reprints of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman stories:
In addition to the reprints, there's an all-new article giving a brief history of The Man of Steel, and another shorter one for Batman. There's also an ad for the next issue, a little feature I used to love but have gone the way of letters pages.
Living in America, I never saw this series until a few years later, and seeing the covers (in those old Heroes World catalogs, I think) was a real eye-opener: I'd never seen superheroes rendered this way, and it really made me want to find these magazines.
On eBay, these issues of Super Heroes Monthly can be found incredibly cheaply (I think I bought this one for $1.50); and their smorgasbord of DC material make them the perfect books to give out to any kids you might know who love superhero comics.
Aug. 1977 - "The Other Side of Night!"
The Rampaging Hulk is one of my favorite b/w magazines; I discovered it as a kid and its stories were always fun and exciting, usually drawn by top-flight artists.
That standard is met again in this issue, featuring a story by Jim Starlin and John Warner, drawn by the unusual combo of Starlin and Alex Nino!
You wouldn't think that's a pairing that would mesh well, but they do. Here are just a couple of exceptional pages from the story:
Since this story has a more sci-fi-ish setting (The Hulk is transported across space by the Ming the Merciless-like baddie known as Chen K'an), Nino's finishes give the story that kind of other-worldly feel, which works perfectly. Plus, the story itself is just a lot of fun.
Following this, there's a "Gallery of Villains", featuring Handbook of the Marvel Universe-esque fact pages on various Hulk villains, like The Gargoyle, The Toad Men, and The Ringmaster.
The regular back-up feature at the time was Bloodstone, again written by Warner and featuring art by Val Mayerik and Sonny Trinidad :
I've never quite gotten that into the Bloodstone strip, and the fact that this installment runs almost twenty pages left me a tad disappointed--I want more Rampaging Hulk, dammit!
At the end of the book, there's this fun, old-school ad for the next issue featuring a real donnybrook between the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner:
The use of some old Kirby poses is a nice touch, since this series featured Hulk stories set early in his "career", back when the King was drawing the book.
Bloodstone aside (which truly isn't a bad strip, just a little dull, to me at least), this is another solid installment of the series, topped off by a fine cover by Starlin.
Nov. 1980 - "The magazine that dares to be dumb!"
A very timely and beautifully painted cover (by Bob Larkin) adorns this issue of Crazy. Makes me miss the old arcade that I spent many hours in...
Anyway, this issue starts off with an extremely cynical and downbeat fake Army ad (drawn by Herb Trimpe and Al Milgrom) that basically suggests we're all going to get vaporized in a nuclear holocaust soon. *Whew*, time for Obnoxio the Clown, eh?
The main parody of this issue is, of all things, a take-off on American Giggolo, written by Paul Kupperberg and drawn by Gary Hallgren:
There's the first of a series of one-page gag strips by an artist named Kovacs, who was sort of Crazy's answer to Don Martin.
Next is a recurring feature, Teen Hulk, by Jim Owlsley and Ron Wilson:
Following this is a fumetti segment called "Sugar Junkies", about a rock band, then "Self Defense for Girls" (by Joey (a girl) Epstein--that's what the credit reads), a one-page gag featuring Spider-Man (drawn by Ed Hannigan and Milgrom, so it looks just like a "regular" Marvel comic), "Crazy Visits The First Day of School", again by Kupperberg and drawn by Ned Sonntag, and then a really interesting piece, "Target...Earth!":
This is an old Marvel monster comic by Lee and Ditko with all-new dialogue by Marc Bilgrey. Its not terribly funny, but it seems more irreverent just from it goofing on a previous Marvel comic.
There's another Howard the Duck feature by Steve Skeates and Pat Broderick, then Obnoxio the Clown by Alan Kupperberg, followed by a piece that I think ranks as one of the best things Crazy ever did:
Goofing on Star Wars is old hat now, but so deliberately replicating a Kenner toy ad in 1980 must have been seemed pretty...well, crazy. And swapping out Star Wars for Kramer vs. Kramer makes it even better.
There's another parody piece, "The Dupes of Haggard", by Murad Gumen and Kent Gamble, followed by a fake ad for aspirin, ending on the back cover with an ad for a "204 pc. Urban Riot Figures" set, looking like those old ads that ran in comics for decades.
All in all, a pretty funny issue (though I did miss Mike Carlin's "Page O'Stuff"), with some real highlights. Crazy was really giving Mad a run for its money!
