Desmond Devlin is an American comedy writer. His work has appeared in ''
Mad'' since 1984, and with more than 450 bylined articles, he ranks as one of the magazine's three most frequent non-illustrating writers.
Devlin's recurring features have included "Melvin and Jenkins' Guide to ____," "Badly-Needed Warning Labels for Rock Albums," "Chilling Thoughts," "Stuff My Friend Moish Says," "Pop-Off Videos," "Mad Deconstructs Talk Shows" and "Graphic Novel Review." He has also written over fifty TV and movie parodies for the magazine, including all eight of the ''
Harry Potter
''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven Fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...
'' films
and all six installments of the ''
Lord of the Rings/
Hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional race of people in the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. About half average human height, Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof. Occasionally known as halflings in Tolkien's writings, ...
'' film series.
[
He was nominated for a 2001 ]Harvey Award
The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be a successor to the Kirby Awards, which were ...
for Best Writer for his work at ''Mad''. He was also nominated for a CableACE award in 1994 for the game show '' Rumor Has It''.
In September 2020, with ''Mad'' having been reduced to a primarily reprint format, Devlin and ''Mad'' artist Tom Richmond announced that they were crowdfunding a book of newly created movie parodies called ''Claptrap''. They launched their Indiegogo
Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows peo ...
campaign with the completed two-page opening spread for '' Star Worse: Plagiarizing Skywalker'', a spoof of the ninth film in the ''Star Wars'' saga. The book will also include takeoffs of older popular or iconic films that ''Mad'' had for various reasons opted not to parody at the time of their releases.The Big Lebowski
''The Big Lebowski'' () is a 1998 crime comedy film written, directed, produced and co-edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows the life of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted ...
'', ''Blade Runner
''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...
'', ''The Blues Brothers
The Blues Brothers (formally, The Fabulous Blues Brothers’ Show Band and Revue) are an American blues and soul music, soul revue band founded in 1978 by comedians Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, who met and began collaborating as original cast ...
'', ''Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American Drama (film and television), drama film directed by, produced by and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's List of directorial debuts, first feature film. ...
'', ''Die Hard
''Die Hard'' is a 1988 American action film directed by John McTiernan and written by Jeb Stuart (writer), Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, based on the 1979 novel ''Nothing Lasts Forever (Thorp novel), Nothing Lasts Forever'' by Roderick ...
'', '' Goodfellas'', '' The Princess Bride'', '' Psycho'', ''The Shawshank Redemption
''The Shawshank Redemption'' is a 1994 American Prison film, prison Drama (film and television), drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella ''Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption''. The film t ...
'', ''Toy Story 4
''Toy Story 4'' is a 2019 American animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the fourth installment in Pixar's ''Toy Story'' series and the sequel to ''Toy Story 3'' (2010). It was dire ...
'' and ''Unforgiven
''Unforgiven'' is a 1992 American revisionist Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by David Webb Peoples. It stars Eastwood as William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after ...
''.
''Claptrap'' was published in 2023.
References
External links
Complete list of Devlin's MAD articles
*
Mad (magazine) people
American comedy writers
American comics writers
American humorists
American satirists
American satirical comics writers
American parodists
Living people
Hunter College High School alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
{{US-writer-stub