Robin Williams

It's even more bittersweet to post this splash panel from MAD's Mork and Mindy parody, given the involvement of the recently-deceased Garry Marshall in spinning off the series from Happy Days. "Shmork and Windy," co-written by Lou Silverstone and Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Angelo Torres, originally ran in MAD #209 (September '79).

Amazingly, Robin Williams' only MAD cover appearance was for his live-action outing as Popeye (with Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl). Directed by Robert Altman, it was spoofed as "Flopeye" by cover artist Mort Drucker and writer Stan Hart in MAD #225 (September '81).

Writer Lou Silverstone seemed to channel Robin Williams' frenetic stand-up style for one of my favourite MAD articles of the entire '80s, "MAD's Crisis Relocation Emergency Evacuation Planner (C*R*E*E*P) Of The Year." Illustrated by Harry North and ending with "Rubin Willyums" doing an impersonation of a Soviet government official giving the U.S. a week's notice of a nuclear strike, "MAD's C*R*E*E*P Of The Year" originally ran in MAD #246 (April '84).

Robin Williams kicked off this early piece of genius from writer Russ Cooper, "If Different Comedians Told The Same Joke (There's a fly in my soup...)" Illustrated by Mort Drucker and also featuring the likes of Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison and George Carlin (like Williams, all sadly no longer with us), the piece originally ran in MAD #289 (September '89).

Robin Williams' enthusiastic performance in 1989's Dead Poets' Society was captured by artist Sam Viviano and writer Stan Hart for the second installment of their "MAD's Video Reviews" series, which originally ran in MAD #293 (March '90).

Another Robin Williams film, Awakenings (co-starring Robert De Niro), was featured in the fifth round of writer Stan Hart's "MAD Video Reviews," which was also the fourth illustrated by Sam Viviano. It originally appeared in MAD #304 (July '91), which hit newsstands a year earlier than Viviano and Hart's parody of Hook, which featured Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan. "Hook'em" originally ran in MAD #312 (July '92).

The opening page for MAD's Mrs. Doubtfire parody, which originally ran in MAD #327 (June '94). It was written by Stan Hart and illustrated by "Shmork and Windy" artist Angelo Torres, seven issues after the pair took down Robin Williams' star turn as the voice of the Genie in Disney's Aladdin (spoofed as "A-Lad-Dim" in MAD #320, July '93). Hart would go on to write two more parodies of Robin Williams films for MAD - "The Nerdcage" (illustrated by Mort Drucker for MAD #348, August '96) and "Pu