366 Days with J. Jonah Jameson, Day 362: The Fuppets Take Manhattan

It's those lazy crazy hazy days between Christmas and New Year's when we don't have to go back to school yet but we've already broken all our holiday toys* (not me, I'm really careful with 'em, altho I've eaten all my stocking candy), and if you're anything like me, you're bored and want a project to occupy your hooves. Well, I've dug my way into Bully's Comics Vault and come up with an issue of Crazy, the House of Idea's second-tier parody magazine for when you couldn't find MAD at the newsstand. Mind you, even if Crazy isn't as acclaimed as its Distinguished Competition, they did have a decent bullpen of writers and artists. This ish contains stuff written or drawn by Marv Wolfman, Bobby London, Mike Ploog, Bob Foster, Marie Severin, John Buscema, and even Jack Kirby's Fin Fang Foom reprinted with new humorous dialogue by Christopher Priest aka Jim Owsley!

Crazy also occasionally featured do-it-yourself shoebox puppet theaters and finger puppets called Fuppets, for clever portmanteau purposes as well as please-don't-sue-us copyright reasons. And it co-stars J. Jonah Jameson, who I know you've been dying to put your fingers up inside of! Dig out your own copy of Crazy #73 (I know you've got one somewhere), get out your paste and scissors (or have an adult get out paste and scissors for you) so you can make the whole shebang! (I'm only reposting a few pages from it, but you get the general DIY idea.)


Panels from "The Fabulous Fuppets Starring in the Spider-Man Television Theatre" in Crazy Magazine #73 (April 1981), script by Steve Skeates, puppet art by John Romita, Sr., props and scenery art by Ron Zalme
The feature provides it all: finger puppets Fuppets™...


...props...yes, that is an iron lung to put Aunt May into!


...several switchable backdrops for real shoebox action!...


...scripts, with dialogue punched up by David Mamet...


But best of all, here's the two-page how-to-do-it comic segment that gives us the groundbreaking Marvel Team-Up of J. Jonah Jameson and the Incredible Hulk! JONAH WILL SMASH!



So don't just sit there and read comic books on your Christmas vacation: take JJJ's advice and go out and make stuff! Alternate Christmas vacation activity: just sit there and read comic books.