Created by Greg Lawrence "Do you think I'd look good in a hat?" How’d I miss this one? A 30-minute Canadian TV comedy lampooning the whole Shamus Game? That lasted three seasons? And I had no clue it even existed? Turns out Butch Patterson, Private Dick ran from 1999-2001 on The Comedy Network, a Canadian channel … Continue reading Butch Patterson
Tag: Parody
Private Eye Popeye
Created by E.C. Segar Pseudonym of Elzie Crisler Segar (1894-1938) POPEYE, everyone's favourite spinach-chugging sailor man, gets the P.I. treatment in "Private Eye Popeye," a lame, low-budget cartoon from the mid-fifties, put out by Famous Studios. It was not Popeye’s greatest moment. Despite the fact this was produced smack-dab-in-the middle of the hard-boiled P.I. craze, with … Continue reading Private Eye Popeye
Duck Twacy
Created by E.C. Segar "Snake Eyes! Agh! Eighty-Eight Teeth! Hammerhead! Oh, no, Pussycat! Pussycat Puss! Bat Man! Double-Header! P-p-picklepuss! P-p-p-pumpkin Head! Neon Noodle! Juke Box Jaw! Wolf Man! You're all under arrest!" "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery," a 1946 Looney Tune cartoon short from Warner Bros., directed by Robert Clampett and featuring Daffy Duck, is … Continue reading Duck Twacy
See Ya in The Funny Papers
P.I. Spoofs and Callouts in Comics & Cartoons If Mickey Spillane Wrote NANCY… from MAD Magazine In the Tradition of Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald and Snoopy (Peanuts) by Charles Schultz Arlo, Janis & Spenser Private Eye Popeye (1954, Famous Studios) Meat Hamburg (Pogo) by Walt Kelly Tracer Bullet (Calvin & Hobbes) by Bill Watterson Sam Spayed (Garfield) by … Continue reading See Ya in The Funny Papers
Nick Danger
Created by The Firesign Theatre "Well, now, the gum's on the other shoe." -- Nick Danger, on a sudden plot shift, in The Case of the Missing Yolks .Even more than the literature, the classic radio eyes of the forties and fifties thrived on first person. And they did it in present tense, as in … Continue reading Nick Danger
Kane Keen, Private Eye
Created by Harvey Kurtzman (script) and Jack Davis (art) A lot of people (and most of the internet) seem to think that KANE KEEN, the eponymous hero of MAD Magazine spoof "Kane Keen, Private Eye," which appeared in the June-July 1953 issue, was a roasting of the then-popular Martin Kane, Private Eye television show. But they'd be wrong. Because if the seven-page … Continue reading Kane Keen, Private Eye
Nick (The Case of the Murderer Who Killed)
Created by Dick de Bartolo (script) and Jack Davis (art) "Drop your guns! I’ve got you covered! You're all going to... er... that place with... er... bars on the window and guards and..." -- Nick cracks the case (sorta) Can a private detective tip the scales of justice if there’s no tipping allowed? In "The Case of … Continue reading Nick (The Case of the Murderer Who Killed)
Lance Parkertip
Created by Don Martin (1931-2000) Public notary, private eye? In one of the more surreal take-offs on the shamus game, MAD Magazine cartoonist Don Martin wrote several stories featuring noted notary public LANCE PARKERTIP. As notaries go, Lance was no babe magnet. With his squarer-than-square tweed jackets, flyaway hair and ever-present pipe, nobody was ever going … Continue reading Lance Parkertip
Fester Bestertester
Created by Don Martin (1931-2000) Billed as "MAD Magazine's Maddest Artist," Don Martin's long tenure there (thirty years!) was marked by his his outrageously surreal cartoons, featuring the humungous schnozzes, large hinged feet, sleepy eyes, unfortunate body hair and elastic and seemingly indestructible bodies of his oddly-named characters and the cacophony of bizarre sound effects that … Continue reading Fester Bestertester
It’s Hammer Time!
Send-ups and Put-Downs of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer "I passed this kid sucking a lollipop. Don Brown dead, and him sucking a lollipop. I rammed it down his throat. I hate injustice." -- from "Don Brown's Body" by Jean Kerr As literary poobah Christopher La Farge pointed out in an article on the Mickey Spillane … Continue reading It’s Hammer Time!