Thursday, July 16, 2015

Mad About Eh!

In late 1953, Charlton Comics took on the ever-growing empire of EC's Mad:

OK, perhaps not the most inspiring title. Eh?

The interiors were much more than ersatz Mad, albeit usually without the same level of talent...

For about a year Charlton put the comic out...

THE ARISTOCRATS!!! 

(OK, I only showed that cover because I wanted to make that joke)

After 7 issues, Charlton re-titled the book From Here To Insanity (but kept the numbering!):

That lasted 5 whole issues. For issue #12, Charlton went from comic-booked sized to magazine sized...and then they relaunched AGAIN:

Yes, the actual title was Crazy, Man, Crazy.

Well, that lasted two whole issues.

After taking nearly a year off, Charlton proved that they were nothing if not stubborn:

Relaunching yet again in comic-size, the new volume of From Here To Insanity lasted all of one month.

But don't despair:

The title was quickly revived, once again magazine-sized, as This Magazine Is Crazy.

Frequently their covers aped other (actually popular) magazines of the day...

But after 7 quarterly issues, the concept finally gave up the ghost with a final issue...

HEY!! That's ripped off from Tomorrow Never Dies!!

If you're keeping track, the book went from Eh! to From Here To Insanity to Crazy, Man Crazy back to From Here To Insanity to This Magazine Is Crazy.

[Charlton also published a comic titled This Magazine Is Haunted, but there's no connection...they "inherited" the title from Fawcett when the left publishing...]

I guess there are two lessons here:
A) Stop complaining about comics retitling and renumbering. It ain't nothing new, and it ain't anywhere as bad as it used to be.
B) It wasn't easy to do a successful Mad knock-off.

1 comment:

Oc said...

Mad props (wink wink) to you for the Aristocrats joke. My only big laff for the day (so far.)