Sunday Mailbag

Q: What movies have you done the parody art for?

A. Do you mean “what movies have you done the parody art for in MAD” or “… for any humor publication”? Before I worked for MAD I did a few parodies for MAD knock-off Cracked Magazine. I don’t have the dates or issue numbers for the Cracked work handy, but here’s the breakdown:

Cracked-

• “God-Hilla” (Godzilla)… also wrote this one
• “X-creMENt” (X-Men)
• “Glad-idiot” (Gladiator)

MAD-

• #405 (May 01) “Traff-eccch” (Traffic)
• #410 (Oct 01) “Lotta Crotch- Bazoom Raider”(Lara Croft- Tomb Raider)
• #415 (Mar 02) “Behind Empty Lines” (Behind Enemy Lines)
• #417 (May 02) “The Royal Paininthebums” (The Royal Tenebaums)
• #418 (June 02) “Spider-Sham” (Spider-Man)
• #424 (Dec 02) “Harry Plodder and the Lamest of Sequels” (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
• #430 (May 03) “Eccch-Men 2” (X-Men II)
• #432 (Aug 03) “Interminable 3” (Terminator 3)
• #438 (Feb 04) “Fools of Rock” (School of Rock)
• #445 (Sept. 04) “Van Helstink” (Van Helsing)
• #446 (Oct. 04) “Spider-Sham Too” (Spider-man II)
• #455 (July 05) “Battyman Begins” (Batman Begins)
• #465 (May 06) “Barebutt Mountain” (Bareback Mountain)
• #468 (Aug 06) “Stuporman Reruns” (Superman Returns)

I only listed actual parodies of full films, and not movie related articles like “A MAD Look Behind the Scenes on the set of the Hulk” or “Rejected Characters from CARS”.

For a while there I was doing a lot of movie parodies, but since “Spider-Man 2” in October of 2004 (2 and a half years), I’ve only done three movies. In comparison, I’ve done 11 TV parodies in that time. I think part of that is because there are not as many parodies in general in MAD as there used to me. I’m not sure why they do fewer these day. On the other hand, maybe I did a crappy job on “Spider-Sham Too”…

Thanks to Ike Ledbetter for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here! I’m still running low!