How Robin Williams' Love for a Superhero Clinched His Comic Book Credibility Forever

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How Robin Williams' Love for a Superhero Clinched His Comic Book Credibility Forever

Robin Williams' Geek credentials were well known, but the late comedian surprised comic book creator Michael Allred when he used a Crazy T-shirt during his appearance on HBO Comic relief. This appearance cements Williams' comics fandom forever and shows how deep his love for the medium was.

Posting on Instagram, Allred recounts how Williams was a huge fan of Allred's signature character, Madman, to the point of wearing a character t-shirt during the Comic relief V benefit program on HBO in 1992.

Writing that he had already heard that Williams was a big fan of the character, Allred was still thrilled to see the comedian sporting some Madman gear on TV. Wearing a t-shirt of a cult character like Madman shows how deep Williams' fandom really wentas Allred's character had only been around for two years at that time.

Robin Williams was a big fan of Michael Allred Crazy

Crazy Available now in collected editions from Dark Horse Comics


Comic art: Madman points a gun.

Madman is the main character of Allred, first appearing in Creatures of the Id in 1990 before getting his own self-titled series Tundra in 1992. Madman is actually Frank Einstein, a corpse revived by two scientistsDr. Boiffard and Dr. Possessing superhuman agility and reflexes, as well as precognitive powers, Einstein becomes the adventurer Madman, the superhero defender of Snap City. After Tundra closed, Madman's adventures were transferred to Dark Horse Comics, which recently collected all of his adventures in hardcover library editions and is prepared to collect them again in Omnibus editions in paperback from next year.

Williams wasn't the only Hollywood fan to notice Allred's affair Crazy. Kevin Smith had a cameo appearance by Allred as himself in Chasing Amywhere the artist actually delivers the opening line of dialogue from the 1997 film. Ben Affleck's Holden can later be seen reading a Crazy comics, while Jason Lee's Brody is also seen wearing a t-shirt with Madman's iconic lightning bolt/exclamation mark symbol. In addition to these Easter eggs, a crazy movie was long in development by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, although the proposed feature film never materialized.

Crazy It has a long history in comics and in Hollywood

Allred's Indie Superhero Is a Movie Star (In His Way)

He may never have made a feature film, but he has one fan on Williams more than solidifies Madman's position in popular culture. Allred went on to create memorable comic strips in X-Statix at Marvel and Zombie at DC/Vertigo, but the artist still periodically returns to the world of Snap City to narrate the adventures of Frank Einstein, his girlfriend Joe, the alien friend Mott the Hoople, the robot clone Astroman and the superhero team Atomics, so I hope Allred returns to write and draw more Crazy at some point in the near future.

So big fan of Crazy as it was, Williams was also passionate about other independent comics of the time. As further proof of Williams' comics fandom, artist David Mack chimes in in the comments section of Allred's original Instagram post, relating his own story about the comedian's interest in Mack's series. Kabuki:

Fantastic photo and story! [Williams] sent me a letter and check once to request back issues of Kabuki. Later, I received a letter from a member of the film crew stating that he distributed some of these comics to the crew.

Be a fan of both Crazy and Kabuki shows that Robin Williams was a huge comics fan and was willing to share his fandom in very generous ways.

Source: Michael Allred

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