Comic-Con 2010 is “in the books” as they say and it was it’s usual exhausting but fun time. This year I did a lot of new things including being on a panel about MAD and the new cartoon show and participating as a guest artist in “Quick Draw” with regulars Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and host Mark Evanier.

There was a lot of interest in the MAD show on Cartoon Network, premiering on Sept. 6th and featuring some of my artwork. Here is an interview with producer Peter Giradi and head writer and producer. Kevin Shinick… you will spot me once or twice at the WB signing we did and on the panel:

That was pretty cool. Kevin and Peter are creative and funny guys and they really “get” MAD, so I hope the show will really take off. There are a few short clips in the video but none of the stuff I worked on.

My “Quick Draw” appearance was especially fun. Basically it’s an entertaining show where fore mentioned cartoonists Sergio and Scott sit up on stage with one other guest cartoonist (in this case William Stout) and draw on boards with projectors so the entire audience can see what they are doing. They then do super fast drawings around themes and games that have the crowd roaring. Usually Mark has three guest artists come up and play a game for a short time, and this year he asked me to be one of the guests… naturally I was thrilled and of course got mercilessly paired with Sergio. The game we played was … well, just read Mark’s post about it.

Other than that I got to hang out with some super talented cartoonists, do a little drawing and signing and drink a lot of beer. Here are just a few pictures:

Hey! It’s Bart Man!

Hey! It’s the guy who created Bartman! Jeff Keane with The Simpsons’ Matt Groening

Thought this was a great costume… MAD Eye Moody!

Jeff Keane, R.C. Harvey and Stephen Pastis

From the WB Booth’s loft… the floor’s other end is literally too far to see.

MAD show writer/producer Kevin Shinick and MAD Magazine editor
John Ficarra hangin’ in the WB green room

MAD artist and art director Sam Viviano

Tags: San Diego Comic-Con

This letter is making the rounds on the interwebby, so…

I first send my work to MAD back in about 1990 and got a rejection letter at that time, but this is not it. As I recall it was in the form of a checklist that had different reasons for the rejection, and it had the same sort of irreverent humor. Sorry now I didn’t save that… it would have been fun to frame up in the studio.

This week’s sketch is of comedienne Stephanie Coutney AKA the goofy but still oddly attractive Flo from the Progressive commercials.

Tags: caricature, Flo, sketch, Stephanie Courtney

I’m afraid my Comic Con wrap-up will have to wait until Thursday… as usual any time away from the studio comes at a heavy price.

Tags: deadlines

..jiggety jig. Flying back home from Comic-Con today… full wrap up tomorrow hopefully with lots of pictures.

Tags: San Diego Comic-Con

Picture by Tom Racine

We are going to dispense with the Sunday Mailbag this week in order to continue with our annoying coverage of San Diego Comic-Con.

Yesterday was a busy day for me here, starting with the Mad About MAD panel at 10:00 am and then signings at both the DC Comics booth and the Warner Bros booth with fellow MAD men Sam Viviano and John Ficarra, and MAD animated show writer and producer Kevin Shinick, plus a surprise appearance on at the Quick Draw! program in between. I wish I had some pictures of the panel but unfortunately I do not. Tom Racine of Tall Tall Radio fame was kind enough to send me the picture above from one of my signings at the DC booth earlier in the weekend. Speaking of Tall Tale Radio, go to the link in the previous sentence to see some great Comic Con coverage.

The panel discussion went well. I got the opportunity to see some of the animations for the first time, including about 5 seconds of one of the segments I worked on. The show is going to consist of a lot of different types of animation from somewhat traditional to collage to stop motion and a lot of different styles of art. Each 5 minute episode will consist of as many as 20 different segments, some as long as 2-3 minutes and some as short as 10 seconds. Many of the segments shown on the “sizzle reel” got good laughs and it was obvious that the show will be very much like the magazine… short bits of comedy one after the other satirizing pop culture, movies, TV and other things the world takes too seriously. Overall the response was very positive to the footage. I don’t think the video they showed will be posted on the internet (legally, meaning by WB or Cartoon Network) but if it is I will certainly link to it. As far as my work on it is concerned, in my very quick glimpse I thought I could see my artwork peeking through after the necessary adjustments the animators had to make… it will be fun to see a whole episode.

Sam and John did a presentation on the history of MAD which got big laughs and each of us on the panel told a few stories about how we discovered MAD and how we ended up working on the magazine. The audience asked a few questions and we were whisked off to sign copies of the magazine at the DC booth.

I’ve got a few people who have promised to send me pictures of the events, so when I do a full wrap up of the Comic-Con I’ll hopefuly have those to share.

In the meantime, today is the last day of the con and I will be signing free copies of MAD (until they run out) at the DC Comics booth (#1915) from 12:30-1:30 and drawing and selling MAD originals at the National Cartoonists Society booth (#1307) from 2:00-4:00. Then I will be laying down with a cold compress over my forehead for several hours.

Tags: San Diego Comic-Con