CRAZY #78

This was the cover of the September 1981 issue of Crazy. The cover showcases their parody of Any Which Way You Can, the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose

Besides their recurring character Teen-Hulk, they introduced the character of Baby Hulk, most likely to have a trademark on both.

Here's their parody of Any Which Way You Can.

This issue introduces the character of Dirk McGurk, who writes bad book reports and school papers. It was probably created so readers would feel good about themselves, or maybe so editors could fill up pages without having to draw.

In real life this would get a D. No matter how bad a report is, no teacher I know would ever give an F to anyone that shows they actually read the book.

Mary Wilshire

Ralph Reese

Another Kinetic Kids feature with a strip on two pages that were supposed to be turned back and forth fast to simulate animation.

Sequel by Paul Kirchner to the previous article Marvel Superheroes That Didn't Make It. They used a lot of Wally Wood assistants like him and Reese in the magazine, probably because editor Larry Hama was one.

Parody of Lou Grant

I don't know if this was a parody of something. Crazy did a lot of pieces where they seemed to think child abuse was funny. Maybe a lot of contributors were abused.

The art is by Marie Severin.

CRAZY #77

Excerpts from the August 1981 issue of Crazy:

Parody of the 1980 movie version of Popeye.

By this time, Neal Adams wasn't really doing much commercial comics work for reasons of creators' rights, though he did continue to hang around people in the field and participate when creators' rights weren't an issue.

Vic Martin art

Contribution from the late Peter Bramley

The panoramic spread across two pages with jokes about the particular location was something started by Mad in the mid-seventies, and discontinued, though it was used by other humor magazines into the mid-80s.

Art by Ned Sonntag.

Initially something where you would flip the pages back and forth.

Mary Wilshire

Around this time, Crazy would parody popular songs in the guise of a Midnight Special spoof. Here they parodied Queen's ”Another One Bites the Dust”

One of a few parodies they did of The Love Boat

Probably by Paul Kirchner

CRAZY #75

The July 1981 issue of Crazy has their parody of the 1980 movie version of Flash Gordon punning Ming's line “Puny earthlings, who will save you now?” they used in most ads for the movie.

The characters in the Starsky and Hutch parody are supposed to be Cannon and Ironside.

Mary Wilshire

The Kinetic Kids was a feature by Stephen Mellor in which the pages were to be flipped back and forth to simulate animation.

Years ago in college my friend Marc and I met Michael Carlin (whom I've worked with since) at a cartoonist alumni retrospective and told him we recognized his work from Crazy, for which he was one of the primary contributors. His response was “I should give you your money back”

They used Howard the Duck as one of their running features. In earlier issues under a different editor they were one-page jokes that could have featured anyone, but this was their attempt to tie it back to the spirit of the original strip before it was buried permanently by the movie version.

“Bite the Wax Tadpole” was an urban legend about how Coca-Cola allegedly was originally translated when they tried to market it to China.

Parody of Battle of the Network Stars, TV's bridge between “jiggle TV” and reality TV.

At the time, most comic books had ads for Hostess cakes of their characters. I believe this was by Paul Kirchner.

CRAZY #71

Highlights from the February 1981 issue of Crazy from February 1981.

This cover by Bob Larkin is the final appearance of The Nebbish as their mascot which their new editor was replacing with Obnoxio the Clown to better tie the magazine in with the Marvel Universe. It's also a pre-cursor to the now-clichéd “evil clown” archetype.

Parody of the Blues Brothers movie.

Arnoldo Franchioni

In keeping a “Mike Mine Marvel” slant in the magazine, there was this article by Paul Kirchner, known primarily for The Bus.

Mary Wilshire doing their recurring “Fantasy vs. Reality” feature.

This is the first gif I made. I'm so proud.

Actually, it's no big deal. I did it because this new feature by Steve Mellor required you to flip the pages back and forth to create the effect of animation.

Howard Cruse.

Parody of WKRP In Cincinatti, one of the many sitcoms that makes smaller cities seem like cool places to live.

A long time ago I printed a letter from someone in Magic Whistle about this very article. It said in part: “[...] inside it looks like I drew nipples on all the female characters' breasts with a blue felt-tip pen. Not even nipples really, just blue dots. The Kent Gamble-drawn Loni Anderson looks particularly fetching”

After the cancellation of Sick magazine, Jack Sparling found a home in Crazy for the silent one-page feature he was doing for them.

Parody of the ads for the fact cards Grolier used to advertise. The art for this was done by Ed Davis.