A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Roy Thomas' Alter Ego about the Mad comic book imitations of the mid fifties. For it, I made a complete list of all titles doing parodies the early Mad way or imitating the format of the comic book Mad for a more general sort of humor books. To that I added a bit of history about the poublishers and artists and as much as I could find about the movies, tv-series and comics being spoofed. The article ran over sixtie spages and ws published in two installments. About a year later Fantaghraphics published a book of Mad comic book imitations by John Benson called The Sincerest Form of Parody. If anyone was suited to do such a book, it was John, but both Roy and I were hurt that neither party contacted us about it. If I would have done a book such as that, I would have included these two stories from an unlikely source. Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert entered the imitation field with their comic Whack, which was published by St. John. It is one of the better Mad imitations, not only because of the superior art, but also the targets and the stories themselves were very well thought out. This is generaluy known by the fans. Less known is the fact that Norman Maurer included a couple of parody stories to his Three Stooges comic book series. One of the few projects he did at St. John without Joe Kubert, the Three Stooges comic book featured hectic stories about the three comedians he later directed in som eof their later films. In #6 and #7 two comic book pardoies were included, which were either intended for later issues of the (cancelled) Whack or Murer had so much fun doing them that he couldn't stop.
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