RIOT #3, 1 of 3

Here's one of the many imitations of the MAD comic book. I've printed a couple stories from RIOT before, so here's an issue in its entirety from August 1954(minus the ads and text). Marvel Comics (or Atlas or Timely), when it was part of the Magazine Management company and before they discovered their own niche, would ride the coattails of whatever the most successful titles were at the time and try to flood the newsstands with several knock-offs of it. In this the titles were CRAZY, WILD, and RIOT. What was the difference? Damned if I know. CRAZY had stories that were meant to be funny, RIOT did specific parodies of current popular culture, and WILD did specific parodies of literary works. Except when they didn't. Maybe that wasn't the case.

Movie studios each had their own gimmick to compete with television for audiences. Fox had Cinemascope, with the screen wider than that previously unseen. This parody of “How To Marry a Millionaire” also parodies the widescreen format. Here's the style Dan DeCarlo used later in perfecting the Archie house style.





There was a time when Liberace was believed to be not only a heterosexual, but the epitome of heterosexuality.