We were watching the 1972 drive-in film classic, FROGS the other night (click the title for a trailer), and about halfway through I remembered this silly send-up of it in the January 1973 issue of SPOOF #3. Lots of laugh out loud moments and highlighted with a Severin, Schwartzberg, and Trimpe three-way of awesome art --rivaling even the best era of MAD Magazine. This is one of the better examples of swampy 70's Silver Age Marvel madcappery, do enjoy! *ribbit!
5 comments:
Ok that's just the cutest damn spoof I've ever seen. Every animal panel is great, funny, and clever -- and a really great Walt Kelly lift!
The frogs with the wanted book, the animals wearing the clothes (I love those snakes talking), the poor dog getting shot, the mean frog with the knife? It just goes on and on.
It's nice to see Marie Severin get to do some art, every bit of it I've seen from her was excellent, and as a colorist she was a big part of what made EC so good.
Best hidden adult joke: "I think my bulbs are broken!"
Those are some evil looks rabbits!
This whole thing is just excellent.
This is pure MAD Magazine material.
Too bad the movie didn't have a frog devouring a man promised in the poster. It could have been done had they paid for the rights to 'Food of the Gods' with the pollution acting as a growth agent.
This spoof followed the story much of the time, the art and jokes made this comic tale a fun read.
Totally great. This team did an excellent job of spooning in the usual number of jokes per panel--in the text as well as the chicken fat--without totally obliterating the plot line in the way lesser spoofs tend to do (and that counts for MAD as well as it's knockoffs). I started laughing at "all the creatures of the swamp bearing grudges as only they can" in the first narrative caption and didn't really stop again until the last page. (Speaking of that, I like the mouse in the thimble helmet riding the rat.)
Severin is a treasure, bestriding six decades of comics production like a giant, every bit as important as the handful of MVPs fans usually talk about. She was instrumental in creating two entire comics zeitgeists: Her contributions to the looks of both precode horror and "the Marvel Age of Comics" cannot be overvalued. And her work here is also a delight. In many instances it's a pitch-perfect ode to Kurtzman while retaining plenty of fresh Marie Severin-style cartooning, too. And of course I was waiting for that Pogo cameo from page one (I assume everybody was), and it did not disappoint.
I feel like the only one on earth who likes the movie FROGS. Either way, I never knew there was a parody of it.
(That's what comes from not knowing Spoof better.)
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