Saturday, January 9, 2010

Cracked Magazine M*A*S*H Fun Book - Sept. 1983

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This oddly-timed issue of Cracked magazine features nothing but M*A*S*H features, which in this case mostly means collecting the various show parodies that ran in the magazine over the years:
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...all drawn by the incomparable John Severin, these parodies certainly look nice, but the jokes are so inoffensive they barely exist. (That said, I loved Cracked as a kid!)

There's also a "M*A*S*H Flip Book" featuring caricatures of the cast bifurcated into three strips, so you can cut them along the lines and make different faces. Minutes of fun, and all you have to do is ruin your magazine!

Mad, of course, did M*A*S*H parodies too, but as far as I know they never got a cover. And they certainly never did an all-M*A*S*H issue like this. I guess the staff of Cracked were big M*A*S*H fans!
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7 comments:

  1. TomJanuary 9, 2010 at 1:22 AM

    Mad did do a MASH cover. Don't recall the issue number, but it was back in 1983, around the time the series was winding down.

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  2. RussellJanuary 9, 2010 at 9:28 AM

    This is the issue you're talking about, I believe:

    http://madcoversite.com/mad234.html

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2010 at 3:56 PM

    Great cover from my favorite MAD caricaturist, Mort Drucker. Look who's missing, though? Poor Frank can't get any respect!

    MAD did several parodies. "M*I*S*H M*O*S*H" (issue #138, Oct 1970) sent up Robert Altman's feature film, while parodies of the show can be found in "M*A*S*H*UGA" (issue #166, April 1974...the same one that has the infamous cover illustration of a hand "flipping the bird" to the reader!) and "M*U*S*H" (in the aforementioned #234, Oct '82).

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  4. UnknownJanuary 9, 2010 at 4:02 PM

    I had this issue back when it came out. Cracked was one of my favorites also as a kid. I remember one of the jokes being Hawkeye in Post Op. A recovering solider says "Dr, Dr, every time I do this it hurts." Hawkeye replies with "then don't do that". The next panel was Hawkeye saying "Groucho Marx 19XX" (I forget the year). I'll give Cracked it's due, it helped introduce a pre internet generation to so many things that had come before it.

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  5. Radar HatJanuary 9, 2010 at 8:26 PM

    Weird the Mad cover leaving off Frank, considering what a huge part of the show he was.

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  6. RichardJanuary 10, 2010 at 3:04 AM

    Another bit of Severin MASH here:

    http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2009/12/sunday-funnies-charlies-angels-and-mash.html

    I've said it before, but some of the jokes could have fit into actual scripts without any alteration. I think we'd be safe in concluding the staff of Cracked were big fans. And Severin was so obviously the perfect artist for this, satire or otherwise.

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  7. TomJanuary 10, 2010 at 1:40 PM

    The joke that Butch R is relating from Cracked magazine (though is quoted from Groucho Marx in the satire) is from an old routine by Smith and Dale, if I remember correctly.
    In the 10th season opener, That's Show Biz, Klinger botches the joke in a skit with Fast Freddy.

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