CRAZY #80

This is the 80th issue of Crazy from November 1981.

Parody of The Howling which I don't remember being a big hit when it came out.

Mary Wilshire

Two pages you would flip back and forth to make look like a cartoon.

Gary Hallgren

Art by Arnoldo Franchioni

Parody of Greatest American Hero

Parody of this ad by Marie Severin

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 #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 #69

CRAZY #69 Here we go with another issue of Crazy, this time from December 1980.

Parody of The Shining.

This person still does cartoons under the name Ken Avidor.

A few times they tried to duplicate the controversy of their Casper parody, this time doing their version of Richie Rich. The writer, Jim Owsley, now writes comics under the name Christopher Priest.

Parodying both Real People and That's Incredible, two shows that were very much alike parodied as a combination by other humor venues as well. This is also in the guise of also spoofing Family Feud, the closing credits of which can be seen on the Real People hyperlink.

Back cover.