Monday MADness: Ready Play One Challenges

The newest issue of MAD contains a 7 page parody of the film “Ready Player One’, art by me words by Desmond Devlin. It was a very fun movie to parody but it did present a kind of unique problem with respect to the background gags or “chicken fat” that is part of what I like to add to the mix.

The problem became apparent to me right away when I was working on the splash page, which was the big race scene. I was brainstorming fun background stuff to put in there, so I was thinking “How about the ’66 Batmobile! That would be cool!” Whoops, the ’66 Batmobile is already in the actual film. “What about the Mach 5?”. Yep, in the movie already. “The Tron cycle?” Pretty sure I saw that also. In a way, “Ready Player One” is already a MAD Magazine parody in how every corner of the film is stuffed with cameos and pop culture references. How does one make fun of something that is already bordering on pop culture parody?

I thought about it and decided I of course needed to include lots of pop culture cameos and references in the spirit of the film, but instead of stuff that gamers would think would be cool, I needed to choose things that no one would ever want to use as their vehicle or role playing avatar. Things like the Beverly Hillbillies truck, Herbie the love bug, Chitty-Chitty Bang- Bang, Wonderbug (anyone spot that one?!?), the Shaggin’ Wagon from “Dumb and Dumber”, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile… you might also spot the T-bird from ”Thelma and Louise”, the Munster’s car, a “Johnny Cab” from “Total Recall”, the Monkeymobile, the Deathmobile from Animal House, etc. in later panels… lots of things that make little sense as game playing icons but poke fun at the excess of nerd eye porn going on throughout the movie.

Likewise I dew a lot of oddball cameos that no one would want to be their actual avatar, like Psy, Travolta and Thurman ala “Pulp Fiction”, Tom Cruise ala “Risky Business”, and one of the ballet hippos from “Fantasia” in the club dance scene.

In the panel where they attack the fortress you’ll see a My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Piglet, and Mr. Magoo packing iron or in warrior armor. There are lots of similar gags.

I thought about drawing serious characters from serious films like Tom Hanks from “Philadelphia” or any one of 20 Meryl Streep roles, but that seemed a little too far away from being a “character”. Better to show the lamest or mildest of fictional characters being turned into bad-ass avatars. That shows the essential silliness of such things.

That’s just an interesting side note into the thinking that goes into one of these parodies.