Friday Comic Book Day.
Last month, Roy Thomas published the first half of my definitive article on the Mad comic book imitations of 1954 in Alter Ego #86. It was our intention to d the whole article in one issue, but after seeing all the illustrations we wanted to add, he decided to cut it in two. The second half will be published in the januari 2010 issue. Roy did his usual splendid job in selecting the illustrations and adding his comments. I recommend this issue to everyone. If don't mind reading stuff on the computer, you really should get the digital version, which as most of the illustrations in color, too. But even Roy has his limitations. Even though the first half of the article is 50 pages long, he still didn't use all of the stuff I send him. For instance, he only used two of the four pages of a sketched Russ Heath satire, which may or may not have been intended for one of the later Timely Mad imitations. As satires go, it is not one of the best. But still, it's four pages of unused Russ Heath work and I would love to share it with you. On the back is the title of a possible Lassie parody, which makes it likely that this is indeed a creation from the mid to late fifties. There is also a signature for Russ Heath Jr. I don't think Heath ever used this signatre on his work, but it may also be a way to identif and date this piece.
2 comments:
Ger Apeldorn,
I, for the life of me can't figure out blogs or how to leave contact information for people, but I just finished reading your synopsis' of all the Mad imitators of years gone by. I really enjoyed your meticulous and concise work. Interesting stuff. You also brought back memories of our weekly trip to the public library when I was in 5th grade. Every week I would check out, and re check out, Les Daniel's COMIX book. I was fascinated by it and it really is one of the few things I remember about 5th grade.
On another note -being that you are a lover of mythos of things that were (and what could have been- if I'm reading you correctly) I thought you might be interested in a project of mine. A kind of passion of mine. It revolves around a Star Trek spinoff that never came to pass, but would've been cool. It might take you a few minutes to peruse...check it out at Supervisor194.com. If I've read you wrong then sorry for the bother but I enjoyed your article and look forward to the next issue of A&E.
Andy
Dallas, Tx
Philip,
I guess you know there has been a short (four issue) comic book series about this same spin-off by John Byrne for IDW publishing? After that he did another five issue series called Crew about another aspect of the Star Trek Universe and issue #4 features a surprise ending to something that originates in the Asignement Earth episode. All of which you can find by googling the titles plus IDW and John Byrne.
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