It's a Madhouse here at AEET again this month, because following hot on the heels of our previous EC / MAD post, I now wish to pose a rather queasy question: Does anyone remember Farrell's 50's attempt at a MAD style humor mag? Of course you don't. And to be honest, it's all pretty forgettable anyway, except for one silly ass mad scientist story inside which would've made the THOIA rounds at some point or another, but eh, why give that blog all the jerquiest posts, ya know? See whatchu think... from the March - April 1954 issue of Madhouse #1.
3 comments:
One thing I love about all the comedy mags that followed in MADs footsteps was how they all adopted the "comedy label" where stuff would just randomly have some word play label on it, but they usually just ended up being "state park" jokes (as Mary Jo from MST3K put it, where the joke just labels something.)
Art is nice in this, it's dynamic, cartoon-y in the right places, the expressions are great, and there's even some good use of panel boarders. I love the running panel (last page, panel 3.) That's a great bit of over-exaggerated cartooning. Fun read!
Chuckled at "Look! A werewolf" and "Looks more like a plain were!"
George after the transformation looks like a cross between a vampire and Boris Badenov from the Bullwinkle cartoon.
George with the vampire look, he looks like a rejected cousin of Cain and Abel from House of Mystery/House of Secrets. He might have been barely good enough for PLOP, but only barely.
Here is the eternal/infernal question, why do the little guys agree to marry Big Bertha types in the first place? Did they lose a bet or do the blushing brides gain a pound a day after the wedding?
The last question remaining- how would this tale be handled as 90% horror 10% humor? How would Eerie or Creepy gore up this one? I can only speculate what the answer would be...
Jerque's out of his league because Jeeze Louise but Clara-Bell is terrifying on pages three and four. Like she'd just stepped away from the table at a particularly gory pie eating contest. But my favorite panel of her is the one on page six I think, where she's got that club she must have picked up on the moon. That one's not so scary as it is really nice cartooning.
In that last image, under the effect of her Jekyll-n-Hyde roofie, she reminds me so much of Trixie the Usherette from the poster of the LA Roxy Theater cast of the Rocky Horror Show way back in seventy-four. And that, in turn, makes me think this story would have made a fine prequel to Forbidden Zone with Hervé Villechaize and Susan Tyrrell as the young lovers navigating those first days of their marital bliss. The pie-eating contest would be a real showstopper! Paging Mr. Elfman!
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