GRIN

Here's GRIN. It was too adult to be MAD, not adult enough to be NATIONAL LAMPOON, and not pornographic enough to be GOOSE. There were three issues published by "AGAP" which to my knowledge didn't do anything else. It was more topical and attempted to be more 'socially relevant' as you will later see.

I think this is supposed to be a combination of Nixon and Agnew, but I'm not sure.

Jack Sparling did a lot of work for mainstream comics and humor magazines. In his final years, he was the editor of SICK, which by that time was owned by Charlton and apparently paying contributors with copies. The most cash-strapped alternative publishers I've worked for don't even do that.

This was the inside front and back cover.


When THE GODFATHER came out the makers took great pains to let the audience know wasn't meant to represent all Italian-Americans. This parody reducing them to the pizza-box stereotype and the humor coming from that would probably be more offensive to them.

Blast #2, 3 of 4

I know how much you missed the rest of the issue of BLAST I have. Continuing my survey of humor magazines that are not MAD, NATIONAL LAMPOON, or CRACKED, here are a few more pages. The last of them will be posted Thursday.







A lot of these magazines had a mascot, I think theirs was this screaming guy. He was on the cover of the first issue designed by Bill Everett.



Mike Kaluta did nothing else for black and white humor magazines except for this. Most of what he did was fantasy/superhero-type stuff. It looks like he, like the rest of the contributors, were just in it for the paycheck.

Bananas #46, 1 of 3

BANANAS started out as similar to DYNAMITE, but for older readers. It was kind of THE ELECTRIC COMPANY to DYNAMITE's SESAME STREET. It was published by Scholastic, which made its money from a captive audience. Kids were given fliers in school so parents would be pressured into buying books from them.

BANANAS started out doing profiles of celebrities and current fads like 16 or TIGER BEAT, and pull-out posters of them. Since they were targeted at the same demographic as MAD, they had the same kinds of parodies and “You Know You're a Schnook When..” types of articles. They eventually became an all-humor magazine with one difference...they were in color. As you can see, they relied heavily on movie and TV stills they got