MADness #40: Batman Begins!

Holy Monday, Batman! It’s another episode of our chronological crawl through my twenty years of work at MAD Magazine. Today we have a look at another superhero movie spoof, “Battyman Begone” written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #455, July 2005. As a huge Batman fan, this job was a genuine thrill to do.

Batman was what got me hooked on comics and cartooning back when I was a little kid. I watched the reruns of the Adam West TV show in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and was obsessed with the character. My parents scoured garage sales for 60’s Batman toys (they were plentiful back then since it had only been a few years since the ’66-68 Batman craze brought on by the TV show and all the toys that came out around then). I ran around with a cape around my neck until I was about 7. My dad brought me home Batman comics from the spinner rack at the grocery store he managed. Today my studio is still full of Bat-toys and items.

This was the first time I lobbied the folks at MAD to get an assignment. Up until then I just took whatever it was they gave me. But when this movie came out I wrote a personal email to MAD editor John Ficarra asking to do the art for the spoof. That email included two pictures of me in Batman costumes:

I am pretty sure I was already going to be assigned this parody anyway, as I had been doing most of the superhero movie spoofs by then, but I’d like to think my campaigning for it tipped the scales.

If you look closely at the third panel in the page above, you’ll see a trash bin with a brownish sport coat draped over it amid the sheet-covered stuff in Wayne Manor. That image of a sport jacket/trash can appeared now and again in MAD for a few years starting in 2004, kind of like the name “Max Korn” did. Not too many readers picked up on it, but I added it a few times as did others. I believe this was the first time I drew it in there. It was something John asked artists to work in when they could… he even sent us pictures of the actual trash can with the jacket on it. I was never told the significance behind the image, but it was some kind of tribute to the then recently retired editor Nick Meglin.

I can’t remember if the guys at MAD nixed that Adam West gag in the last panel of page 4, seen in the pencils above, or if I decided against it. Either way it was out of place. One of the main jobs of the artist on these parodies is to “sell the gag”, meaning to draw a panel that makes sense with the dialogue and, at its best, helps the humor in that dialogue to land home. The “judge” character is talking about being beat up by Batman, but the action in the panel doesn’t describe that. I was forcing the shot to be outside the car for the West gag, which isn’t very funny in the first place. I’m glad we skipped it.

I don’t have a copy of Des’s original script for this, but I am pretty sure adding former Batman movie director Joel Schumacher as Batman’s fear hallucination and referencing the Bat-Nipples was my gag. I added it in when I was doing the final art as it isn’t in the pencils, and that likely means it wasn’t in the script.

I guess I’m missing the roughs for that last page.

This really was a dream assignment for me. I’d go one to do the art on parodies of the other two Christopher Nolan films for MAD, as well as get to draw the spoof of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”. I also did two MAD variant DC Comics covers with Batman in them, and the three kid’s book spoofs with Bats. So I got to draw the dark Knight quite a few times for MAD. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get another shot at some Batman art for MAD again sometime.

Toon in next week, when we have a look back at a spoof of another “reality” TV show that focused on the ridiculously impractical world of customized cars!