I’ve been trying for years to track down a specific issue of a Mad-style comic magazine from the mid-to-late '60s. It wasn’t Mad or Cracked. It may well have been Sick, but I think I’ve seen the covers of all the issues from the era and none rang a bell.
Here’s what I remember: a full page (probably back cover) saying something like “This magazine is for right-wingers and leftists” (probably not in those words) with a cartoon of two essentially identical figures representing the two sides, the leftist one carrying a copy of “Das Kapital.” A racy, Mickey Spillane-type hard-boiled detective comic strip (this was the last article in the magazine) with a little lady standing outside the panels whitewashing out all the four-letter words. A series of cartoons based on southern foods (spoonbread: a loaf with spoons sticking out; hush puppies: dogs with their mouths tied shut; hominy grits: a guy pointing to his plate apparently counting “how many,” black-eyed peas with boxing gloves). A story about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Real ads for books called “How to Be a Polack,” “How to Be Italian,” “How to Be Jewish.”
Does any of this ring a bell with anybody?
Well, I waas thinking of Crazy , but that was the '70s, not the '60s.
Right, and the mag I’m thinking of was definitely no later than 1969, and almost certainly earlier.
bump
So have I stumped the Dopers?
While I don’t recall the issue yiou speak of, there were other humor mags pre-1970. Sick was a Mad imitator that tried to get what Mad and Cracked left behind. There was also a short-lived magazine started by the Playboy bunch that siphoned off a lot of the best of Mad from its early days, including Harvey Kurtzman. I can’t recall the name. Mad had to be rebuilt, and most of their best-known names came in at that time.
Marvel comics had “Not Brand Ecch!” and “Spoof” before they came out with the magazine-sized “Crazy” . NBE was definitely pre-1970, and Spoof was on the cusp, there.
Bump! because I’m curious to see if [Bsick** is the answer, as I expect.
(“Sick” is very often the answer, with me.)
Sick is still pretty much the only possibility I’ve been able to come up with. I’ve bought several issues (including an annual) via eBay, and not found any clues (like a mention of the articles I remember in the letters column, or those real ads). BTW, the magazine I’m looking for did have a letters column, so it wasn’t a one-off.
Oh, and I saw a reference to this in an early issue of Mad, with references to their imitators: what humor magazine had a drunken cat for a mascot?
