National Lampoon Vol.1 #30 - National Lampoon Inc.

Sept. 1972 - The Boredom Issue!

The issues of NatLamp I'm most interested in are of course the ones with the really cool comic book material, but those are also the most expensive ones to find for a decent price.

This particular issue only has a little bit of that type of material, but pretty much any issue of National Lampoon under the art direction of Michael Gross is worth looking at--the unusual cover alone bears his, uh, stamp.

Among the articles is a piece on actor George Sanders, who had killed himself just a few months earlier:

There are a couple of articles revolving around the "Boredom" theme, the main one being a four-page section featuring the stamps seen on the cover, and what you can can get by redeeming them:

...this thing is a clip art dream!

There's a silly piece called "Tony Hendra's World of Meat", featuring hunks of dead animal flesh sitting in for various famous people and objects through history.

The comic insert--printed on newsprint instead of the magazine's normally glossy stock--is drawn by Ralph Reese, and is all about President Nixon's infamous brother Donald:

There's a "Foto Funnies" page featuring some nudity (always nice), some cartoons by Gahan Wilson, a brutal piece about Johnny Carson by Michael O'Donoghue (not realizing of course that it would be Carson who would be the catalyst for the creation of Saturday Night Live, the thing O'Donoghue is arguably most famous for).

There's another piece called "Bland Hotel", featuring some really nice, vintage-y artwork:

It was articles like this that I think best exemplified the work of NatLamp Art Director Michael Gross. It was Gross' job to give the magazine a crisp, professional look, knowing the right kind of work to use for specific pieces. For this article, the illustrations really make the thing.

There's another article on "Our White Cultural Heritage", "Nuts" by Gahan Wilson, and some other comic strip material by some other NatLamp regulars.


Not a bad issue, but I don't think its one of the Lampoon's finest. I'm still determined to find some others that feature more comic book-centric material--I guess I just have to keep looking...

National Lampoon Week, Post Script - Subscription Ad

This was one of those annoying subscription cards that every magazine jams its pages with, but of course when you're talking about the Lampoon it was done a little differently.

I've read several books analyzing comedy, and one of the things the Lampoon is credited with bringing to the mainstream is the concept of "Anti-Comedy", or the "Anti-Comic"--instead of someone making jokes pointing out the stupidity of others, that someone embodies the stupidity, ramping it up, and making themselves a reflection of the stupidity they see in the culture. People like Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray are probably the most famous examples of this type of comedy.

And clearly that's the approach here--the Lampoon is telling its fans they are the exact kind of people the "outside world" thinks they are, which hopefully generated a couple of subscription sign-ups.

Plus you get a free Dr.Hook LP!

National Lampoon Week, Part 5 - October 1978

October 1978 - The final installment of our National Lampoon week is from October 1978--a pivotal moment in the history of the Lampoon.

This issue was published just mere moments, it seems, before the release of Animal House, which of course would become one of the most popular movies of all time, probably making the name National Lampoon more famous than it ever had been(the movie would have a similar effect on Saturday Night Live, whose ratings almost doubled between its third and fourth seasons).

The cover is by Shary Flenniken, who has been doing the "Funny Pages" strip regular "Trots and Bonnie" for a long while. Inside is the also regular "Nuts" strip by Gahan Wilson, who also does the honors on a piece called "The Greatest Show On Earth", a grim "musical" about war.

This sole comic book feature is "The Deal", written by Jeff Greenfield(who would go on to a successful career as a political pundit on ABC and CNN), and, according to the table of contents, was drawn by Larry Hama, Ralph Reese, Jim Sherman, and Neal Adams:

As you can see, Greenfield has a slightly negative view of what life is like in Hollywood.

Like I said, this is sadly the only comic book feature in the book, but this subscription ad did catch my eye:

...yep, that's Animal House star and future Marion Ravenwood Karen Allen doing what looks like a really painful split, all in the attempt to help sell the Lampoon(only an unrelated note--man, do I love the fact that Allen does appear, in at least some form, in the upcoming Indiana Jones movie).

I'm no expert, but I think an argument could be made that Animal House was both the best and worst thing that ever happened to the Lampoon. Best because the movie was a massive success and remains one of the most influential movie comedies of all time, and made the Lampoon an almost household word.

But you can also say worst because Animal House, for all its brilliance, branded National Lampoon as a meaning adolescent, gross-out comedy, light years away from the brilliant political and social commentary the magazine did so well. I can only imagine what people like Michael Gross, Michael O'Donoghue*, Sean Kelly, and Tony Hendra must have thought when they saw something called National Lampoon's Van Wilder playing in multiplexes.


*Yes, I know O'Donoghue is dead. But I assume he's still around somewhere, floating in comedy heaven.

National Lampoon Week, Part 4 - January 1978

January 1978 - One look at the cover ought to tell you, without me having to state it, around what time period this issue is from.

(Hard to imagine, from this perspective, that Farrah Fawcett was that popular, but I guess people twenty five years from now will feel that way about Jessica Simpson or Lindsay Lohan.)

This issue features a whole raft of comic book all-stars doing feature work, in addition to Gahan Wilson's "Atlantis Solved Again" and "Nuts", "The 6 Blunders of the Ancient World" featuring a painting by Val Mayerik, and "Trots and Bonnie" by Sharry Flenniken.

The main color comic feature is called "Gothic Romance Comics presents: Love's Savage Passion", written by Danny Abelson and drawn by none other than the legendary Joe Orlando:

There's also the strip "Two Year Affair"(formerly called "One Year Affair"), written by Byron Preiss and featuring an astonishingly-detailed and nuanced art job by Ralph Reese. I mean, wow:

...I love how, in the last panel, the woman's leg is popping out of the frame, drawing your attention to her, the same effect she's having on every guy within the panel itself.

As if that wasn't enough, there's another comics feature, "Ted Mann's Danger Rangerette" drawn by none other than Frank Thorne who, for my mind, drew about the sexiest women in comics, ever:

By this time in NatLamp's history, art director and innovator Michael Gross has gone, but his visual stamp on the magazine was still in evidence. The Orlando sequence looks and feels like an old EC comics(or Plop! perhaps), and having two such different art styles as Ralph Reese and Frank Thorne back to back is genius.

National Lampoon Week, Part 3 - November 1974

November 1974 - I can only imagine what it was like in the Lampoon offices in the early to mid-70s. Here you are, writing a scathing satire/humor magazine, and the biggest political scandal in a century falls right in your lap. Like manna from heaven.

This issue is almost entirely dedicated to Watergate--of course. Other than the regular strips in the back "Funny Pages" section ("Nuts" by Gahan Wilson, "One Year Affair" drawn by Ralph Reese, Jeff Jones' "Idyl", "Trots and Bonnie" by Shary Flenniken, and Ed Subitzky's form-busting comic strips), the rest of the magazine is all Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.

The main color comic feature is called "Constitutional Comics", written by Christopher Cerf and Henry Beard, and drawn to an almost mathematical precision by the one and only Russ Heath:

On the inside "cover" is a Watergate-inspired goof on those classic comic book toy ads of yore(click here to see a bigger version):

I dunno, I woulda bought a set like this.

There's also a second comic book feature, this time drawn by another comics mainstay, Don Perlin, again written by Cerf and Beard:

...writing for this magazine around this time must have been like falling off a log.

National Lampoon Week, Part 2 - August 1973

August 1973 - Another fine cover by Frank Frazetta, as different from yesterday's as possible. Whereas the previous painting was dark and loose, this one is light, goofy, and sharp.

In addition to Vaughan Bode's "Cheech Wizard", Gahan Wilson's "Strange Beliefs of Children", Ed Subitzsky's "The Beginning of Life" and "Worlds in Collusion", Shary Flenniken's "Trots and Bonnie", it's the one and only Neal Adams who does the art for the comic book color feature, "Son-O-God Comics", written by Sean Kelly and Michael Choquette.

I admit--I really have no idea what's going on in this story, outside of its superhero comic parody elements, and the overall effort to be as offensive as possible, I guess. In any case, when you hired Neal Adams, he always brought his "A" game:

In addition to this is Jeff Jones' regular one-page feature, "Idyl", another instance where I have no idea what I'm reading but the pictures sure are pretty:

Nice stuff, eh?

National Lampoon Week, Part 1 - June 1972

June 1972 - Ah, the National Lampoon--at one point, it was the focal point of the counter-culture humor wave that was washing over mainstream America in the early 1970s. Before Saturday Night Live, before Steve Martin, before SCTV, there was the Lampoon.

Growing up when I did, National Lampoon was already losing its influence on society, and in any case it was way too adult for me to even consider buying. And by the time I was old enough to do so, the magazine was, frankly, a pathetic also-ran, seeming like an old-time comedian still thinking the word "tits" would produce howls of shocked laughter, and didn't know enough to get off the stage.

But! In its heyday, during the years just before SNL and under the art direction of Michael Gross, NatLamp was like no other magazine, and it corralled an astonishing group of talented writers and artists.

I had really no idea how much comic book-related work NatLamp published until I saw an issue-length examination of the magazine in TwoMorrows' (again with the TwoMorrows!) Comic Book Artist, #24. I couldn't believe the line-up of comics all-stars NatLamp had in their pages--Neal Adams, Gray Morrow, Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Joe Orlando, Frank Springer, Bruce Jones, Russ Heath, and more. And, even better, this material was done in full color, and looked pretty much like a "real" comic--wow! I had to get my hands on some of these issues!

So all this week we'll be talking Lampoon, and since I have no desire to dryly catalog every article(not only would that be boring to write, and even more boring to read, there's this excellent NatLamp site that does the job) I'll be concentraing on the comic book material in each issue. It should be fun.

Obviously, the comic book connection is right off the bat, with a Frank Frazetta cover! Inside there's this gag panel, drawn by no less than the late, great Gray Morrow:

In addition to work by Jeff Jones and Vaughan Bode(drawing their "Idyll" and "Cheech Wizard" strips, respectively), there's some grim cartoons(are there any other kind?) by Gahan Wilson.

The center comic book section is titled "The Last TV Show", written by Doug Kenney(a regular Lampoon writer, who also played "Stork" in Animal House) and drawn by Bruce Jones:

What's astounding to me about a lot of this comic material in NatLamp is how pitch-perfect in tone it was. These things read and felt like real comics, not a sloppy humor magazine approximation of them. This piece could've run in a Warren mag, or even later Jones-centric titled like Alien Worlds.

Be here tomorrow, to see some classic comic book material drawn by none other than...Neal Adams!