Marvel Published a Line of Comics Based on a Failed Bob Newhart Sitcom

The late great Bob Newhart wasn’t just a legendary stand-up comedian, he was also, of course, a prodigious sitcom star, appearing in six seasons of The Bob Newhart Show, and eight seasons of Newhart. The latter famously gave us the most memorable sitcom finale of all time, not including the time ALF was captured by the U.S. government and presumably dissected in Area 51 off-screen.

Less fondly-remembered is Newhart’s third foray into the sitcom world: the aptly-named 1992 series Bob.

Bob starred Newhart as Bob McKay, the creator of an old Batman-esque comic book superhero named Mad-Dog. In the first episode, McKay gets hired to work on a gritty ‘90s reboot in which the campy character has been reimagined as a brutal vigilante who literally murders his boy sidekick. Even Zack Snyder wouldn’t go that far.

To hype the sitcom, Marvel comics released a series of Mad-Dog comic books, and they came with a postmodern twist: Half of the book depicted the Silver Age-era of Bob McKay’s character, while the other half presented the edgy ‘90s version. In issue #1, the classic Mad-Dog battles invading alien kitty cats (yes, the climax involves coughing up hairballs) and then later beats the shit out of a gang behind a 7-Eleven.

It was a very strange promotion. Did the 13-year-olds buying up Marvel comics in the early ‘90s care about a new show starring Newhart, a comedian who was in his 60s at that point? The cover page’s declaration that Mad-Dog #1 was “based on the character from the hit TV series Bob” may not have been quite the selling point they thought it was. 

Writer and artist Ty Templeton, who handled the campy first half of the comic, revealed that it was “one of my favorite professional experiences.” Whereas Evan Dorkin, who wrote the conspicuously gritty section, told io9 that he “hated the entire experience. I think it’s one of the top three worst things I ever wrote.”

As Comic Book Resources noted, even though Bob didn’t paint the most accurate picture of life in the comics business, it did get to highlight a number of industry legends in one episode. After traveling to a comics convention, Bob encounters creators like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane and Sergio Aragonés, who all made cameos as themselves.

In retrospect, Bob may have fared better in the Marvel-saturated 21st century, and not back when Marvel was just four years away from declaring bankruptcy. The series only lasted for two seasons, and the second season shifted premises dramatically, forcing the Bob character into a gig working for Betty White’s greeting card company, which in no way involved the participation of Mad-Dog and his homoerotic subtext.

And Hallmark, for some reason, didn’t release a line of in-universe cards “from the hit TV series Bob.”

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