Wallace Wood — Bored Of The Rings

Original Art and The Artists

Plop #23, October 1976, “The King Of The Ring”

Wallace Wood revisits his Mad comics chops with this terrific parody of Lord of the Rings.

Terrific, but little seen, because it appears in a later issue of Plop, when sales were low, and… it’s only been collected one other time — in digest format — a few years later.

With the exception of (perhaps) the title splash this is the best page in the issue, mashing up gags about hobbits, the seven dwarves and Prince Valiant — all in the distinctive Woody style. (And yes, one word balloon is definitely not PC in the original, but it was nearly 50 years ago, and appears to have been modified.)

Welcome to Day Nine of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.

The 80s digest reprint did a much better job of promoting of what you received when you plopped down (ouch) your dollar.
The classic Harvard Lampoon satire of LOTR has gone though multiple printings since it first appeared in 1969, and unlike most parodies, has stayed in print since first publication.