It Took 28 Years To Write This Dr. Seuss Parody

I’ve been working on my new MAD Magazine article for decades. It started 28 years ago when I wrote a parody that re-imagined Dante’s Inferno as “Seuss’s Inferno.” The spoof originally ran in the pages of Gravity, the humor magazine of Brandeis University.

Later that school year, MAD selected me for their summer internship program and said that they also wanted to publish “Seuss’s Inferno” (which I had sent them as part of my application.) However, on further reflection, veteran editor Nick Meglin realized that my poetry had completely failed to capture the Dr. Seuss sound.

So “Seuss’s Inferno” was my first sale as a writer AND my first rejection – a dubious distinction.

After that, nothing happened for several decades. Well, many things happened, but most of them aren’t relevant to this story. The one exception was that Nick Meglin’s critique of “Seuss’s Inferno” stuck with me. When I was writing “The Ghastlygun Tinies” last year, Nick’s lesson about poetry parodies drove me to work hard to capture Edward Gorey’s style not only in the verse, but also in the art notes that I wrote for the illustrator. Speaking of which, take a look at this sample image from that article:

Please note how wonderful Marc Palm’s art was. That comes back later in this story…

Umpteen years after my first attempt at a Dr. Seuss parody for MAD, editor Casey Boyd sent out a call for submissions for the issue slated to be published in October of 2019. Having enjoyed great success with 2018’s “Haunted Humor” issue, MAD was putting together another Halloween issue. This time, it would be built around the theme of “Hell.”

I decided to rewrite my old “Seuss’s Inferno” concept from scratch, holding onto nothing but the title. This time, I would aim to capture the feel of Seuss’s verse and have a more focused and topical premise: Since this would be Seuss’s vision of the underworld, each of the nine levels of Hell would be populated by people who had committed sins specifically against children.

In this new spin on “Seuss’s Inferno,” different levels of Hell referenced different Dr. Seuss books. For example, Hop On Pop became “Toss DeVoss.” A lengthy passage devoted to the eternal damnation of anti-vaxers was written in the style of Green Eggs And Ham. Sample couplets included:

I will not stop the painful lumps

I will not vaccinate for mumps…

Protecting kids is not my jam!

Leave me alone, Satan-I-Am!

I was particularly proud of the section about Stephen Miller rotting in Hell, which began with the lines:

In a sin for the ages

He put innocent kids in cages!   

(The mere thought of it enrages!) 

With days to spare before the deadline, I sent my brand new and completely Seussian satire to MAD...

...and it was promptly rejected. I now had a pitch that had been reject twice, 27 years apart – another dubious distinction.

This time around, the story was rejected because MAD already had an article for the Halloween issue that used a “9 Circles of Hell” theme (from writer and artist Tom Bunk.) However, one of the levels of Hell in my article focused on climate change deniers. Casey wanted to know if I could forget about Hell altogether and write a stand-alone piece that just looked at the climate crisis through the eyes of Dr. Seuss. 

I could. And I did. And almost three decades after my original pitch, it’s out today in the new issue.

It’s a parody of The Lorax called “The Lobbyist.” Art director Suzy Hutchinson had the excellent idea to turn “The Lobbyist” into a “Ghastlygun Tinies” reunion by hiring Marc Palm. Check out this gorgeous detail from his illustration:

That figure on the right with the nice shoes and the money spilling out of his pockets is the parody's title character, an oil industry lobbyist. The Lorax urges readers to keep a close eye on him:

Watch as to D.C. he goes                                                

Well armed with the cash that flows                                                

From BP, Shell, and Chevron,                                                            

Koch Industries, and Exxon.                                                

There he buys politicians with amazing ease                                                

Then he tells them to tell you that Jesus agrees                                    

That we should all just ignore the planet’s last wheeze            

Until one hot day soon the climate change forces                        

The start of more wars over fewer resources!

You can see – and read – the whole article by picking up a copy of MAD #10 at your local comic book shop right now... because 28 years is too long to wait.