John Ritter

TV veteran Arnie Kogen looked like he was having a blast mocking the inconsistencies in Three's Company in the Angelo Torres-illustrated "He's Company." It originally ran in MAD #196 (January '78), midway through the third season of shenanigans for John Ritter, Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt.

Given the huge market for pop-culture Christmas ornaments, I'm truly surprised that no one has actually marketed a Three's Company tree-trimmer since writer Scott Maiko and artist Scott Bricher facetiously proposed this one 18 years ago. It appeared as part of "Hallmock 1998 Holiday Catalogue," one of a handful of full-colour sections to hit MAD in the late '90s. This one ran in MAD #376 (December '98).

No discussion on poorly-timed MAD material can occur without mentioning their parody of John Ritter's early-2000s comeback, 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter. Ritter died on September 11, 2013, just as MAD #434 (October '03) - containing the Angelo Torres-Josh Gordon parody "8 Simple Rules For Writing A MAD Spoof Of A Dopey ABC-TV Sitcom" - was hitting newsstands and arriving in subscribers' mailboxes. Ritter had filmed three episodes of the series' second season before he passed a

Ten issues after the 8 Simple Rules debacle, MAD found its own way to pay tribute to John Ritter. Hermann Mejia caricatured the late actor for the Jacob Lambert-penned "You Know A Rapper's Gone Soft When..." It originally ran in MAD #444 (August '04).

"He's Company" artist Angelo Torres caricatured John Ritter, Liberace and a whack of early-'80s celebrities in one of my favourite MAD articles of the entire decade, "MAD's 'TV Exploitation Movie' Producer Of The Year," which ran in the entirely-original-material MAD '84 Super Special.