Introduction. Back in the year 2000, when Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site was only three years old, I got an email from Jon Cooke, editor of Comic Book Artist. He was planning to do an entire issue devoted to the comics of National Lampoon, planned for early 2001. He was looking for contacts of National Lampoon contributors and hoped I might be able to help. I did have a few, which (with permission) I shared with Jon. But the person he was most interested in interviewing was Michael Gross, NatLamp’s art director from 1970-75, the era he wanted to focus on of the special issue. Since that happened to be the focus of my site, he asked me to be a consultant on the issue.

After exchanging some emails back and forth that year, the project seemed to be stalled, mainly due to our inability to contact Michael. But then in 2002, out of the blue, I got an email from Michael, expressing his admiration for my website. He was alive and well, retired from magazines and Hollywood, and running an art gallery in California.

And so, the special issue of Comic Book Artist, The Comics of National Lampoon, was finally published in early 2003, with Gahan Wilson himself doing the cover illustration. It featured interviews with Michael Gross, Gahan Wilson, Alan Kupperberg, Neal Adams, Frank Springer, M.K. Brown, Ed Subitzky, and Mark Bodé (son of the late Vaughan Bodé). (I also did the National Lampoon-style logo treatment for the cover, and provided high-quality scans of covers and other stuff for the issue.)

Jon invited me to write a short piece about the design of National Lampoon, but, like a lot of stuff planned for the issue—including interviews with B.K. Taylor, Shary Flenniken, Sean Kelly, and Michael Choquette—it didn’t make the cut. It’s probably just as well, since it overlapped quite a bit with Jon’s own introduction.

I was recently reminded about all this by a post on Instagram by Dummy magazine, and so I thought, why not publish the article on my site? And so, without further ado, here is my piece, written in 2002, lightly edited:

The Design and Art Direction of National Lampoon

My first exposure to National Lampoon was in the magazine rack at K-mart.: The Best of National Lampoon No. 1, the one with Rick Meyerowitz’ Mona Gorilla on the cover. I could tell it was some kind of humor magazine, but it was in the same part of the rack as Playboy. Adult stuff. At the age of fifteen, I didn’t feel comfortable flipping through adult magazines in K-mart. But it caught my attention. A year later I was a subscriber.

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I had been an avid Mad reader since the age of 10. My parents gave me a copy of The Ninth Annual Worst From Mad (with the bonus 33-1/3 recording of “It’s A Gas”) for baby-sitting my younger siblings for the first time. 

In those pre-teen years, Mad was my window into the world of adults. I couldn’t go see the X-rated A Clockwork Orange, but I could read the parody in Mad. Although Mad tackled adult topics, they were careful to keep it PG, no doubt aware that a large portion of their readers was in the pre-teen set.

Mad was also my introduction to subversive humor. They poked fun at the foibles and flaws of modern society, but they did so in a very self-conscious, self-deprecating way, as if to say, “look how stupid people are, but we’re just a bunch of idiots—what do we know?” which had a buffering effect.

Mad had a distinct format that went back to its beginnings as a comic book. Everything was framed as a “Mad Look at…” or “Mad Goes to…” or “Scenes We’d Like to See” or whatever. There was usually an introduction to anything more than a page long, to make sure the reader knew what the joke was going to be about. There were little idiosyncrasies, such as the unnaturally frequent use of the word “mainly” or the seeming editorial requirement of using an exclamation point at the end of every sentence. 

There was something purposely silly about the Mad approach to humor. It wasn’t enough to simply do a parody of a movie or a TV show or a magazine. Everything had to look funny, with every corner filled with gags—not necessarily related to the larger article. Use black and white cartoons instead of color photos for a magazine parody? It didn’t matter, as long as it was funny. And it was funny. But you would never mistake a Mad parody for the real thing.

National Lampoon was very different. Where Mad’s heritage was derived from comic books, National Lampoon was the child of glossy magazines and college humor, by way of the Harvard Lampoon. The self-deprecating attitude of Mad (which always referred to itself as worthless trash) was replaced with mock-grandeur (for example, the elaborate architectural plans for the 1000-story National Lampoon Building). It was sophisticated in a way that made you feel smart and hip. No topic was out-of-bounds and there was a shocking, adult frankness that made Mad look like kid’s stuff.

In National Lampoon, a hard line was drawn between parodies and everything else. Parodies were made as faithful as possible to the object of the parody, down to the paper stock and even the format in some cases (they did a pull-out full-size newspaper page printed on newsprint, for example). Every little detail was painstakingly captured, and, if possible, enlisted in aid of the larger point of the parody. If not, it was left as is to ensure that the effect was complete. All of this realism and mimicry made their parodies even more subversive. It was like peering into twisted but hilarious alternate reality. 

The non-parody articles were presented in a straightforward way not unlike a general interest magazine with clean layouts that let the author or artist take center stage. By framing these other articles in such a simple, consistent way, you could always tell what was a parody and what was not. There were no introductions, no explanations. When it was a parody, the magazine transformed itself into something else. When it wasn’t a parody, it just looked like National Lampoon.

This approach was so skillfully handled that they could even run parodies of Mad magazine or National Lampoon itself.

The talents behind this were art director Michael Gross and design director David Kaestle who were at the magazine for most the early ’70s. It seemed there was no visual style they couldn’t ape.

This distinction between parodies and non-parodies was true with its use of comics as well.

In National Lampoon, a parody of a comic book would look exactly like the real thing—until you started reading it. Every last detail—including the black and white ad on the inside front cover of the comic—would be meticulously recreated. Not only were they able to get artists to imitate these styles, they often used top comic book artists such as Neal Adams, Bernie Wrightson, Walter Simonson, Alan Kupperberg, Joe Orlando, Frank Frazetta, Francis Holleridge, Frank Springer, etc.

A good example of the difference in approach to comics between Mad and National Lampoon is the way each handled a parody of Tarzan. Tarzan was often parodied at Mad. A typical example would be a “Scenes We’d Like to See” piece where Tarzan gives his Tarzan yell, swings from tree to tree, and finally arrives at a tree-top outhouse where the yell becomes a sigh of relief. The style is cartoony and broad and is simply a gag based on Tarzan’s well-known characteristics.

National Lampoon took a subtler approach. In Michael O’Donoghue’s Tarzan of the Cows, drawn by Frank Springer, it looks exactly like a vintage Tarzan comic book, except the premise has been changed. Instead of his parents’ plane crashing in the jungles of Africa, it crashes on a farm in Wisconsin. And instead of being raised by apes, the infant boy is raised by cows. Other than that, it looks and reads just like a real, vintage Tarzan comic, except it’s achingly funny. The Mad piece was a simple gag about a well-known and popular character. The National Lampoon piece was about the whole idea of Tarzan.

The comic book form was frequently used as a satirical tool in the Lampoon. An appropriate genre would be chosen and re-cast as needed. So you get superhero comics like Deadman (a crime-fighting corpse), Verman (becomes a louse or other pest when touching his lips to garbage), Son-o-God (Christ as a superhero), Utopia Four (intellectuals out to save the world); romance comics like White House Romance, Boys’ Romance Comics, Doug Kenney’s First Lay and First High Comics; war comics like Defeat Comics, horror comics like Dragula, and Tales of the South; “classics” comics featuring Siddhartha, and science fiction comics like Weerd Tayls (written by cockroaches in the distant future). Practically every genre was used at one time or another, even underground comics. Eventually, National Lampoon devoted an entire special issue (National Lampoon/The Very Large Book of Comical Funnies, 1975) parodying dozens of comic genres covering the entire history of the form, from Krazy Kat to Zap.

Like the non-parody articles, National Lampoon’s non-parody comics were handled more straightforwardly. Early in his tenure as art director, Michael Gross created the Funny Pages section, filled with comics that ran anywhere from a quarter to a full page. The Funny Pages became one of the most popular and enduring parts of the magazine with such regulars as Nuts by Gahan Wilson, Dirty Duck by Bobby London, Trots and Bonnie by Shary Flenniken, Chicken Gutz by Randall Enos, Cheech Wizard by Vaughan Bodé, Politessman by Ron Barrett, Idyl by Jeff Jones, The Appletons and Timberland Tales by B.K. Taylor, Mule’s Diner by Stan Mack, One Year Affair by Ralph Reiss and Byron Priess, Shab by B. Kliban, several long running series by Charles Rodrigues, including The Aesop Twins, and an endless series of “meta” comics by Ed Subitsky. Later on, the Funny Pages section was home to Zippy the Pinhead by Bill Griffith and strips by Dan Clowes, Mark Marek, Drew Friedman, and Rick Geary.

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Ultimately, National Lampoon had a bigger influence on me than Mad. I’m not sure if it was because of the magazine itself or because it appeared when I was coming of age. Reading it gave me a healthy ability to not take anything completely seriously. It also gave me an eye for visual design that has helped me professionally as a commercial artist.

When I read Mad, I wanted to be a cartoonist. But when I read National Lampoon, I decided to become a magazine art director instead.

Postscript

While my piece got cut, Jon did generously give me a full page—on the inside front cover, no less—to promote my website in lieu of payment for my help with the issue (which, to be honest, was nothing compared to the work Jon put into it). Here is the ad I made:

Ted Mann, who started writing for the National Lampoon in 1975 and continued through the eighties, has died at age 72. He was probably best known for writing the “O.C. and Stiggs” series for the magazine. After his time with NatLamp he went on to be a writer and producer for several TV shows, including NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and Homeland.

R.I.P., Ted.

Obit at the Hollywood Reporter.

Back in 2007, Graphic Technology Inc. published “National Lampoon: The Humor Magazine Complete Collection on 1 DVD-ROM” I wrote about it at here the time. Over the years, it’s been an essential resource for me when I get questions from readers asking about articles and cartoons in the magazine. As I mentioned in 2007, it’s basically a bunch of PDFs and they are completely searchable. To make things easier and faster, I copied all of them to my computer. It’s much better than having to flip through actual issues (not to mention the wear and tear that would entail).

As I also mentioned in 2007, there are things missing, such as the special issues, but also certain things like insert cards which sometimes had editorial content, not just subscription promos. Over the years, I’ve noticed pages missing here and there. But I didn’t realize until recently just how many are missing.

For example, I received an email the other day asking about something that appeared in the June 1977 (“I got my job through the…”) issue. There are 104 pages in that issue, including the covers. But the item the reader asked about was completely missing. Flipping through the issue, I discovered the following pages were missing: 43–46, 61, 62, 79–82. And pages 3 and 4 were stuck between 98 and 99. Some of these included entire articles.

That’s ten missing pages in one issue. Incredible. I’m surprised I never noticed this before, but I guess I just assumed there were only a few pages missing and didn’t see it. It’s possible some of this stuff was intentionally left out for some reason, but it mostly seems random, as if the magazines they scanned were missing pages. Or it could have been simple sloppiness. I assume they had to unbind the issues to scan them and maybe some of the pages just got lost in the process.

I don’t know if this issue is unusual or if it’s a problem that affects the entire collection. And I don’t really have the time or inclination to go through every PDF, page by page, to find out.

The DVD-ROM is long out of print, but you can download it from The Internet Archive. Be forewarned: It’s only mostly complete.

It’s been a long time since I’ve added new content to any of the listings on Mark’s Very Large National Lampoon Site. There was one big gap in the Books & Anthologies section: The 199th Birthday Book (1975), a pre-Bicentennial special issue, featuring all-new material, that skewered American history. It was edited by Tony Hendra, with contributions from Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sean Kelly, Doug Kenny, Dean Latimer, Bruce McCall, Brian McConnachie, P.J. O’Rourke, Gerry Sussman, and John Weidman, plus many of your favorite NatLamp artists.

I set it aside because of the insane decision by someone back in 1975 to put all the credits on a single, alphabetical index page in the back of the issue. The normal practice, used in every other issue they published, was to include a contents page, usually near the front, sometimes on the back cover, or, in one unusual case, under the letter “C” (The Encyclopedia of Humor). Instead, they did this. (See above.) It makes compiling a listing so much more difficult.

I finally bit the bullet and did it. It took literally hours to go through all 192 pages, flipping back and forth to the index page, poring over it to find articles and who the writers and artists were.

What a terrible idea. Maybe someone thought it would be funny.

Anyway, you’re welcome.

Well, not with David himself. He died in 2004. Jack Urso, who runs a website about the Hot Hero Sandwich TV series (1979-80), has done an interview with David Kaestle Jr and Louisa Kaestle, the son and widow of David Kaestle, who was an art director at National Lampoon from 1972-74. It gives an overview of his life and work both before and after the Lampoon, which included designing the logo for Hot Hero Sandwich. 

I exchanged emails with David in 2002, hoping to get information from him about his time at National Lampoon for my website. He was said he was busy and would get back to me in a couple of weeks. Sadly, that was the last I heard from him. So Jack’s interview is about the next best thing.

In my opinion, David was the best designer who ever worked for National Lampoon. Although he’s usually listed as an art director, he was responsible for the design of the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, The Encyclopedia of Humor, and many other special projects in addition to the magazine itself. Michael Gross was a great art director, but I believe David was responsible for the magazine’s excellent use of type and getting every last detail of its parodies right. (I am a typeface designer and former magazine art director and designer, so you can take my word on this.)

Celebrated fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta’s granddaughter Sara has a YouTube channel where she does excellent video presentations about her grandfather’s life and work. Most recently, she did one about Frazetta’s relationship with the National Lampoon, where he did several covers and inside illustrations.

As you can imagine, I know a lot about National Lampoon and its history, but much of what she presents is new even to me. She does a concise and accurate job of describing the magazine and some of the people who worked for it, including art director Michael Gross, and goes into detail about how he was hired and what he (and his wife) thought of the magazine.

I just discovered this three-year-old video, which is something of a post-mortem of the National Lampoon brand, and it’s pretty good. It looks at the history of National Lampoon‘s foray into movies, pegging Christmas Vacation 2 (2003) as the best example to illustrate what went wrong.

I’ve never seen this movie—or any of the “National Lampoon” movies beyond European Vacation (1985)—so it was like looking under a rock I’ve been avoiding for decades. And, well, it’s kind of disgusting. But this guy’s analysis is sound.

I will add one thing he doesn’t mention. Henry Beard, NatLamp‘s first managing editor, was against doing movies. Ironically, it was his departure in 1975 (along with co-founders Doug Kenney and Rob Hoffman), taking a $7-million buy-out clause, that left the magazine strapped for cash, which in turn led them to start making movies in order to make money to keep the magazine afloat.

This YouTube video tells the sad story of how that ultimately worked out.

Years ago, there was a site called Egg City Radio where you could download a set of .zip files containing all the episodes of National Lampoon Radio Hour. I used to direct people there when asked, but never posted a link here because I didn’t want to bring it to the attention of certain lawyers. Unfortunately, the site disappeared a few years ago.

However, I’ve discovered another site, called Radio Echoes, that hosts all the shows individually for streaming or download. I feel like I’m taking a chance by posting it here, but I’m less worried about publicizing things like that nowadays. Hopefully, it will still be there when you click on the link. (Knock on wood.)

And, of course, feel free to use the extensive Radio Hour listings on my site as a guide.

Last Saturday night I went and saw Saturday Night, the new movie directed by Jason Reitman. It tells the story of the beginnings of Saturday Night Live by recreating the 90 minutes before the show first aired. It’s a pretty clever way to do it. Most of the scenes were based on real events, even if they didn’t happen during those 90 minutes—some happened earlier, some later. A few scenes were made up by combining different events with some creative license. But it works.

Overall, it felt very authentic to the spirit of the show and people involved. The humor of Michael O’Donoghue, for instance, was not sanitized for modern audiences—and neither were the reactions he got from the other characters in the movie. While the connection to National Lampoon does not come up (Lorne Michaels hired a significant number of Lampoon writers and performers), the Radio Hour does get a passing mention.

The casting was very good, particularly the actors playing the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. Their voices and mannerisms were very accurate, even when they didn’t quite look like the original person. The guys playing Chase and Belushi were uncanny. The actor portraying Michael O’Donoghue was good, especially getting across his acerbic personality, but he was younger and better looking than the real MO’D. The guy who played Jim Henson virtually brought him back from the dead. On the other hand, I had trouble with the choice of Matthew Rhys as George Carlin. I like Rhys as an actor, but he didn’t sound or look much like Carlin.

I’ve heard this movie described as a “suspense comedy,” and that’s accurate. You know they’re going to succeed, but it’s hard to see how it was even possible before it happens.

As someone who saw the show’s first broadcast when it aired, and was a fan of the show into the early eighties, I really enjoyed it. I want to watch it again just to catch background details I’m sure I missed. It looks like it was made by people who knew the show well and loved it for what it was. Recommended.

(On a personal note, I was thrilled to see that they used one of my fonts throughout the movie for titles and captions.)

Chris Miller was a frequent contributing writer (and later editor) of National Lampoon during the 1970s. He’s best known for his satirical short stories, often revolving around the topic of sex.

During his time with the magazine, Chris went on the road to college campuses around the U.S., giving talks about humor and satire, which included reading some of his short stories from the magazine. This is an audio recording of one of those talks, from early 1977, sent to me by the person who recorded it, who wishes to remain anonymous.

The talk contains adult themes, and is not suitable for young or sensitive individuals. NSFW, as they say. Keep in mind that this was the seventies, when attitudes about sex were quite different from today. Consider yourself forewarned. If you’re a fan of the magazine and Chris’s stories from back then, never mind. You know what you’re in for.

(The newspaper clipping shown in the video is about an earlier campus appearance Chris made in 1975. Read more about it here.)