Making a Mockery out of "Mac"

"More like Charles WITLESS, amirite?"

A while back in this space, I mentioned “Mac,” the first advertising character in comic books, and his whirlwind transformation from nebbish nobody to mass of man-muscle.

But I didn’t have time to get into the parodies that came from this seminal work, so I thought I’d show those off here. Several of these have extra humor lurking in the fine print. This is one from What The… #1:

What The… did a couple more of these. Here’s one from #5:

A mashup from Tom the Dancing Bug:

Something a little more political from Ted Rall (but from 2010 politics, not 2020s politics):

Here’s one from a 1978 Super Grover comic.

And a bit from The Simpsons’ Radioactive Man #1 that questions that whole “a few weeks” claim, mashing up Atlas with Batman:

Nobody loves the one-page parodies more than Marvel, it seems. Here’s one that ran in multiple Marvel Comics this very year, as part of the run-up to the Deadpool and Wolverine movie (written by Ryan North):

But when it comes to Charles Atlas parodies, one has to reserve a special award for Flex Mentallo, who appeared in Doom Patrol and later got his own miniseries. His powers expanded on “Mac’s”; he could alter reality just by flexing his muscles just so.

Grant Morrison’s work on Doom Patrol is challenging to summarize—it was often so weird that it made other superhero stories look like police procedurals. But in the excerpt below, you can see a frequent theme of Morrison’s: mythic power (with a hint of unabashed silliness) set against the forces of depression and anxiety. That’s a big part of superheroes’ appeal in the modern world, and it’s part of the appeal of that original Charles Atlas ad, too.

If you want a bit more of the weird flavor of Doom Patrol, here’s a Flex Mentallo scene from the TV adaptation:

Next: TJoW deadline!