Mad #177 (Albert Feldstein) - Towering Sterno Issue - September 1975

In the decade of the disaster movie, Mad again sent Mort Drucker out to draw the all-star cast led by Paul Newman (1925-2008) and Steve McQueen (1930-1980) of The Towering Inferno.  McQueen was the highest paid actor in Hollywood at the time but he took a long vacation after this one.  Dave Berg joined in the fun with his "The Lighter Side of Summer Hazards."  While Hollywood was in love with the special effects associated with disasters, Mad was still looking for a shred of a plausible plot and failed to find any.

The television parody in this issue, "Cheeko and the Ham" was also a disaster.  Did anyone really watch that awful show?

Anti-smoker and closet-inventor Al Jaffee combined his passions in his "Mad Devices Designed to Solve Our Smoker vs. Non-Smoker Problems."  Unlike other cartoonists, Jaffee actually shows how his inventions would work.  Unfortunately, your average smoker could not be bothered to wear any of these secondhand-smoke diverters. [JAM 6/25/2010]

Departments:
Plot-Broiler - The Towering Sterno
X-Posed - More Mad X-Rayvings
Don Martin - One Day in the Park; One Beautiful Evening Last May; The Great Zucchini And His Cannon
Minor Disaster - Young Sports Illustrated
Comic Shnooks - A Mad Look at Superheroes
Err Apparent - How Many Mistakes Can You Find in This Picture?
Berg's-Eye View - The Lighter Side of Summer Hazards
Sour Gripes - It Ain't Fair When
Where There's Smoke, There's Ire - Mad Devices to Solve Smoker vs. Non-Smoker Problems
Shoe Biz - Footnotes to Folklore
Joke And Dagger - Spy vs. Spy
Impairing the Morale of a Minority - Cheeko and the Ham

Fold-In - Tank