Wacom just announced the release of a new version of it’s Cintiq line of pressure sensitive tablets/LCD monitors… the 12WX. Unlike the heavy and bulky 21UX and it’s predecessors, this one designed to be far more portable and lightweight… more like a sketchbook for “on the go”…. sorry, I just drooled a little bit.

The Cintiq’s are a combination of a pressure sentive tablet and an LCD monitor, enabling the user to draw right on the screen using all the benefits and features of a wacom tablet. I use the Cintiq 21UX in the studio, and love it.

The new Cintiq 12WX is much smaller and lighter, weighing in at 4.4 pounds as opposed to the monster 22.4 pound weight of the 21UX. The screen is also smaller of course at 12.1 inches diagonal, but for portability it should be ideal. It has a simplified, built in stand that folds flat so it’s completely self contained. With a crisp 1280 x 800 resolution it should also be sharp enough for very detailed work. Best of all, it boasts the same 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity, tilt and rotation sensitivity, express keys and touch strip… all the toys it’s big brother has. Ooops…. drooling again. Check out this video of it in action:

This has been a long time coming and is definitely on my Christmas list. It will be ideal to do color work when on the road. Right now I can only do via a regular Wacom tablet and my MacBook Pro’s LCD screen, which is hard when you are used to a Cintiq. Unfortunately as of right now it looks like it’s only available in Europe, but I am sure that’s going to change soon. The bad news? if it’s similarly priced in the US it will be over $1,700.00!

Thanks to DRAWN! for the heads up!

Last week I posted the final artwork for an ad job I did for Hardee’s Restaurants that was supposed to be used in full page ads in Rolling Stone and other magazines, but ended up not being used at all due to ad budget cuts and instead was used for some internal promotion.

That may seem outrageous but that is what sometimes happens in the advertising business. Companies often just burn up money producing images and designs for ad campaigns that never get off the ground. I’ll get paid full rates (and advertising generally pays a lot better than editorial) to do finished art that is only used as part of a pitch to a client… one of several different ideas to advertise the client’s products. If the one I worked on is not chosen, then it doesn’t see the light of day. Even though I get paid in full for the job, it’s sometimes a little disappointing not to see the work in use.

This is a job from a few years ago that illustrates that point. The end client was Taco Bell, and the concept was to create a large display image for a new kid’s meal toy concept called “Cleat Peepers”. These were small, plastic baseballs about the size of large marbles that were fused together like two pool balls touching, and then were affixed to a clip that would wrap underneath the shoelaces of a pair of tennis shoes or baseball cleats. They looked like eyeballs on the tops of your sneakers. One pair lit up along the “laces” of the balls, one had pupils that googled around weirdly, one squirted water (??)… can’t remember what the fourth one did. Anyway the client wanted a fun, cartoony sort of illustration that would be loaded with text and used in those standing displays with the real toys affixed and displayed somewhere on the image.

After some roughs it was decided we would use baseball cards as the placeholders for the display toys, and anamorphic cleats with the “eyeball” type cleat peepers on them in a baseball stadium. They wanted simple, colorful and a little goofy. Here are the resulting roughs:

This was more of a “kid as the player” approach

This was the pro player version with the full stadium, uniform, etc.

They liked the pro version. The old fashioned baseball graphic element at the bottom was axed and we went ahead to final art. This was very big (18″ x 21″). I did the inks and then colored in layers:

I did the “cards” seperately and dropped them in on another layer, for the final art:

Click image for a closer look

Text and other graphics where to be added by their art department. They were very pleased with the peice. They sure put me through a lot of revisions on the pencils and color (sorry I didn’t save all those steps), but that is another thing about advertising… they pay very well but expect even the most minute changes to be made no matter the stage.

As it turns out this never was used. I believe they test marketed the toys in certain areas and kids didn’t like them, so they dumped the project. I spent all summer eating Chalupas every day for lunch looking to see some of my artwork in Taco Bell, and all I got was an extra ten pounds around my midsection. Again, I was paid well and promptly by the client, but it was disappointing not to see the piece be used… it would have been cool to think how many people would have seen that artwork in all the Taco Bells all over the US.

Now I’m hungry for a Chalupa…

The silicon enhanced, calorically challenged former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham. This is a study where the body and posture are central to the caricature.

A Guide for the Visual Artist: Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Computer operating systems are tricky pieces of software. Imagine if the manufacturer of your car, something you use and need every day, had to build their vehicles so that you could buy and use seats from one company, a steering wheel from another, tires from a third, etc. That’s the challenge for companies like Microsoft… write a program that runs your computer put will also work with all the hardware and software out there on store shelves. The car analogy goes even further in that most consumers don’t need (or care) to know how a car works, they just want it to work without problems.

Microsoft is commonly vilified for it’s mess of an operating system in Windows… unstable, bloated, bad security, etc. In a way it is Microsoft’s own fault because the very reason it’s the overwhelmingly dominant OS is the reason for it’s difficulties. Way back in the early days of personal computers Bill Gates and Microsoft decided to write and allow Windows to be used on any piece of computer hardware, whereas Steve Jobs and Apple wrote Mac OS as a proprietary program and wouldn’t license it to run on anything but Apple hardware. It’s quite a bit easier to write a program to work on only one type of computer and with only a handful of programs and peripherals than to try and make it work with everything.

However Apple’s recent resurgence in the PC world (if you want to call increasing to a still minuscule 8% of the US personal computer market) seems to be taking it’s toll on it’s OS. The recent release of Mac OS 10.5 aka Leopard has had it’s fair share of bugs, problems and incompatibilities. Not all the problem’s are Apple’s fault… in fact despite having taking much more time than usual to develop and having released multiple builds of the new OS to developers a surprisingly large number of programs and hardware did not have Leopard ready updates or drivers ready when it was released. Even Mac staples like the Adobe products are having a few issues with some of their programs. As a result the adoption of Leopard by Mac users has been cautious. Apple has become very Microsoft-like in that they are beginning to rely much more on the ‘evolution’ model of software development… release a new program into the wild and fix problems with software patches as they occur. Realistically that might be the only way for an OS to exist given the overwhelming number of users and almost infinite combination of software and hardware they run these programs on.

A week or so ago Apple released the first update to Leopard in version 10.5.1. I had already installed Leopard on my MacBook Pro to get the hang of it, but decided to take the plunge on my studio Mac Pro with the update. I’ve been using it now for over a week and have had a chance to put it through some paces. Most reviews and articles on the new OS are geared for either geeks or general users, so I thought I’d write my experiences based on the point of view of a working artist/illustrator… detailing what is working and what isn’t with respect to what an illustrator needs out of their computer.

First off, here’s my hardware setup: Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel with 4 GB ram, Apple Cinema Display, Wacom Cintiq, HP LaserJet 2300 and Epson Color Stylus 2200 printers, Microtek 9800 XL scanner, USB Modem, iPod and iPhone. Software I use daily for my work: Adobe PhotoShop and Illustrator (CS3), Microsoft Office’s Word and Excel, Quickbooks Pro (accounting), Mail, Address Book and iCal (PIM), DVD player and DVD Capture (for references), web browser, Fetch FTP client, FAXstf Pro (faxing) and assorted other little programs. This stuff varies of course, so results also may vary with respect to different hardware and software.

Installation

Installing Leopard was painless for me. I expected that, as I have a fairly new Mac being only a little over a year old and not very bloated with programs or the kinds of files that get left behind with lots of installing and uninstalling software. I used the “Upgrade and Install” option. There are also “Archive and Install” and “Erase and Install” options, both of which do clean installs of the OS rather than writing over your existing OS. That would entail reinstalling all your software and hardware, setting, etc. I would suggest doing an upgrade first, and if you have any problems then redo installation using the “Erase and Install” method. One well known bug with Leopard is that if your Mac is older and you initially created your administrator account (your main identity on the computer) with an OS earlier than OS 10.4 Tiger, it will no longer be recognized as an admin account. Alternately, if your password was over 8 characters long and created in OS 10.2.8 or earlier, you can’t log in at all. Use these fixes for the former and latter. It took a while but I had no issues in the upgrade. I was soon booting up to Leopard.

Hardware Compatibility

Hardware compatibly is the most important thing initially… what good is your OS if you can’t use your hardware? Testing it with all my art related peripherals took some time but the good news is, with one very notable exception, all my hardware worked seamlessly in Leopard. If I learned one lesson in the decades of being a Windows user it was this: don’t buy off brand hardware. Yes, Windows is suppose to work with most hardware but if you buy a $50 printer from “POS Technologies” then don’t blame Microsoft when it won’t work with an upgrade. Always buy hardware from a well known company with a history of good support. It used to be with Apple that there were no fly by night hardware companies making hardware that worked with Macs, but these days that’s not true. In fact, companies that are generally very reputable under Windows sometimes only give half hearted support for the Mac platform, so you have to be double cautious when investing in Mac compatible hardware. I recently learned that the hard way.

My first concern was the Cintiq. I use the hell out of this piece of hardware. Fortunately if there is one area of the computing world that is paid more attention to with respect to the Mac platform it’s the graphic design world, since Macs were so superior in that area in the early days a much higher percentage of publishers and graphic design professionals used Macs compared to other businesses, and that carry over is still valid today. Wacom has excellent Mac support and had Leopard ready drivers released immediately. My Cintiq worked perfectly right away. I would advise for the Cintiq, and for all hardware in general, that you delete and then reinstall all drivers and software after upgrading as a precaution. It’s quick and easy to do, and insures you don’t have any oddball files messing up your compatibilities. I also advise keeping up with driver updates as they are released. I check with Wacom every month or so and always download and upgrade to the latest drivers. I have done several projects already with the Cintiq on Leopard, and it works as well as it ever did in Tiger.

My printers needed a little more work. They initially worked but there were some issues, especially with the LaserJet 2300 which kept giving me memory errors. One of the great things about OS X is that Apple includes drivers for hundreds of different specific pieces of hardware. Both my printers had built in OS X drivers, but it seems at least in the case of the LaserJet Leopard either didn’t install the newer drivers or tried and didn’t do it very well. By going into System Preferences > Print & Fax I just deleted the printers, powered them down and then back up. Leopard recognized them, installed the new drivers and they both work flawlessly. I use the LaserJet for business correspondence and the Epson Color Stylus 2200 for proof printing and for printing large sheets of reference for jobs. Both work very well and I actually like the simplified Leopard print dialog boxes better than Tiger.

My monitor and USB modem had zero issues… the upgrade just worked with them without tinkering.

My scanner is where I ran into problems. I used to think Microtek was a reputable company, but then I also used to use Windows. The scanning software that came with the latest Microtek 9800 XL Mac drivers didn’t work in Leopard… it just froze and crashed when I tried to use it. After a little research I discovered that Microtek has a very bad reputation with respect to supporting Mac in general. A friend of mine ran into a problem when he upgraded to OS 10.4 Tiger a few years back and discovered his relatively new Microtek scanner didn’t work. He contacted Microtek tech support to ask when a new driver would be available, and they told him “never”. Only their latest scanners would get Tiger drivers. This scanner was less than 2 years old. I discovered that my 9800 XL didn’t even have a supported driver for Tiger under an intel-based Mac, and no one would tell me if they would ever write a Leopard driver for my 20 month old scanner. For this reason, if you use a Mac I would strongly advise you DO NOT BUY ANY MICROTEK PRODUCTS. They have only feigned interest in supporting their products under the Mac platform, and either refuse to write new drivers for anything but their latest hardware or take a ridiculous amount of time if they do release new drivers. It’s been well over a year since Mac switched to Intel processors and they still don’t have an official driver for the 9800XL. That scanner was $1500.00… it is ridiculous they don’t provide proper support for such a high end item. I’ll never buy another Microtek anything.

So, I had to get a new scanner. I need a large format one and that’s the expensive part. I decided on the Epson Expression 10000XL as that company has a great reputation for supporting their products under any platform. True to form they had a fully Leopard compatible driver and scanning software already available for download on their site. It took only a few minutes to get it up and running. I intend to do a hardware review of this scanner in the near future, but for now suffice it to say it works 100% under Leopard.

Non-Apple Software Compatibility

Here’s where things got sticky. I can’t understand why so many programs were not ready with Leopard compatible updates to ensure they worked on day one with the new OS. There are a few websites with lists of programs that have Leopard compatibility issues which I would check out before upgrading. They are by no means comprehensive, so I would also check the specific support sites of any programs I use regularly… if there is no mention of Leopard on a given program’s support/sales website, take that as meaning it will crash and burn under Leopard.

Adobe PhotoShop CS3/ Illustrator CS3- Both of these programs work perfectly fine under Leopard. They have updated themselves a few times since I installed OS 10.5, so I do not know if their compatibility is a result of said updates or not. Regardless, zero problems. No noticeable upgrades in speed or use, but no degradation either. Back in the spring Adobe finally released CS3, which was the Universal release of their creative suite and therefore finally ran natively on IntelMacs. I have been told that some of the Adobe CS3 programs have trouble under Leopard, specifically After Effects, but an upgrade for that is scheduled for next month. I’ve done several jobs in PhotoShop with the Cintiq with no problems whatsoever under Leopard.

Microsoft Word and Excel- Artists don’t just create, we have to live in that boring world of business also. Client letters, contracts, etc. are all a part of daily life. The Office suite for the Mac are my preferred business programs, and they work without any problems under Leopard. Like the Adobe programs, Office’s automated update engine was busy as a beaver in the week or so after Leopard was released, so I do not know if the updates made them compatible or not, but either way they work just fine. Early next year those lazy bastards at Microsoft will finally be releasing Office for Mac 2008, which will finally bring native Universal support to the programs. Right now they work just fine with OS 10.5.

QuickBooks Pro 2007- I use this program for all accounting including client invoicing, tracking and account management, so it is indispensable. It was not compatible with Leopard initially but Intuit had an upgrade released with a week of Leopard’s debut that brought it up to 100% compatibility. Zero problems.

DVD Capture- This is a utility I used a lot that worked in conjunction with Apple’s built in DVD player that allowed you to capture still pictures from a DVD. I used this to get reference pictures of actors for use in my work. It never really worked all that well with Tiger, since it often captured off-center pics that included parts of the window borders and such but it was functional. It seems to work the same way with Leopard’s DVD Player, but I have long since switched to the VLC program for DVD playback and capture. VLC is a robust player that can handle almost any video codec under almost any OS (including Leopard), and has a built in capture feature. I still use DVD player if I just want to watch a DVD on my computer (which is never) but I use VLC for everything else.

FAXstf Pro- This program disappointed me under Leopard. Not functional, and no sign of an update in sight. OS X’s built in fax function is a joke, and FAXstf worked great for creating a custom cover page, organizing faxes, filtering fax spam and everything else I had to do. Believe it or not there are still plenty of clients that use fax machines for contracts, invoicing, etc. Right now I am getting along with the OS X fax but it sucks. I am looking into a different program called Pagesender, which seems to be a good alternative and is fully Leopard ready.

Fetch FTP- I use this handy program a lot for uploading big image files to either my own or a client’s FTP folder for them to retrieve. Fetch 5 works great under Leopard. I did upgrade to the latest version (5.3) which features an updated look and certain Leopard features, so be sure and update to 5.3 before running Fetch in Leopard. If you already have Fetch 5 it’s a free update.

Using Leopard

The OS itself has plenty of pros and some cons over Tiger. Most of the features don’t specifically apply to use by the visual artist, but some are invaluable or at least pretty handy for a computer user in general and therefore useful to a digital artist.

Desktop- I like eye candy, so the new look and feel of Leopard is fun and welcome. The new Dock has been getting a lot of flack for this reason or that, but I like the 3-D look, little light indicators for open programs and the glassy dock surface. The “Stacks” feature, where a folder on the dock expands into a curved stack of files with a click for easy access, I can live with or without. I organize my files into category folders anyway, so I don’t see that feature being all that handy. I also don’t mind the somewhat translucent menu bar, something that is getting roasted by Macheads on message boards everywhere.

The Finder- The Finder is the Mac’s file management system. The new Finder took some getting used to , but overall it’s better than the old one and seems a bit faster as well. I can see the “smart folders” feature, where you can set up a folder under the “searches” category in the Finder with specific parameters like type, recently opened, etc., being useful if you can figure out ways to make it productive for you. Personally I can’t see how I would use it. “Coverflow” is the new Finder feature that uses a visual iTunes-like format with files instead of albums. That I thought would be handy as I could really get a good look at the image before figuring out if that’s the one I want. I often have multiple versions of a pencil sketch with small differences from revisions that is impossible to see in the small thumbnail image in the old Finder windows. Here I discovered a problem. I had always used the PhotoShop feature that created “Image Previews” when saving files so my icons and thumbnails were visual equivalents of the images themselves… a pretty way of looking at your icon files. It turns out that this preference screws up the Finder previews, and those cover flow images were horribly pixelated and looked terrible no matter how high a resolution the actual image was. So, now that feature is useless unless I go back and resave all those images with the “Image Preview” preference turned off in PhotoShop. That would take all afternoon. I guess I’ll just use cover flow with new files for now and if I happen to open an old one I’ll resave it. Oh, well.

Mail, Address Book and iCal- These programs are all updated with Leopard. I use them all the time as my PIM (personal information manager), e-mailing clients, keeping track of contacts, scheduling stuff, etc. They have been given some tweaks but basically “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the philosophy and these programs were very functional and useful in Tiger. One feature I am looking forward to trying is the automated data recognition, which supposedly scans your e-mails for dates, contact info, etc, and allows you to add things to iCal or address Book with a simple mouse click based on it’s recognizing someone’s address, invitation to an event, etc. So far no opportunity to try that one out. One small thing I like… iCal now shows the actual date on the Dock icon even when closed as opposed to “June 17″, which for some bizarre reason was the icon’s image when the program was closed in Tiger.

Time Machine- This is a built in backup feature that is incredibly cool and smart. Using a separate hard drive, Time Machine will back up your computer every hour. More than that, it keeps track of changes and documents these changes in a series of ‘snapshots’ of your computer’s entire hard drive. Then, if you find that something is missing from a particular folder, you can open Time Machine and see a beautiful graphic visual of that folder and a series of images of that same folder receding into space behind the current one. You can flip though the previous folders like literally going back in time until you come to one that contains the missing folder. Highlighting the folder and clicking “restore” will restore the file to your current folder. I used it to go “back in time” and retrieve a file I had accidentally deleted when I emptied the trash without checking it earlier in the day. Time Machine will not create a bootable backup but there is a method to restore your entire system from a Time Machine drive, so it’s almost as good as a bootable. The drawbacks are that it takes up a lot of hard drive space, and is limited by the space in terms of how far back you can go in time. Once your Time Machine backup drive is full, it will delete the oldest of the saved files as it adds the newest. It uses some smart organization to maximize the drive use, though. I bought a 500 BG firewire drive as by TM drive, and it is only up to 300 GB of use. It saves hourly levels of backup over a 24 hour period, then eschews that for a daily level going back a month, then weekly backups until the disk is full.

Safari- The default Apple web browser has been updated… and is as useless as ever. It is incompatible with many web-based forms and services like my online banking, payroll and most annoying my website’s CMS system. It even has issues with WordPress aka this blog’s software. I have used Firefox ever since I switched to the Mac and have no intention of switching to Safari. Eccch.

Other stuff- I have read that some of the other features, like remote desktop control and such have their problems in Leopard. I don’t use any of that stuff, so I have no experience with that and couldn’t care less anyway. Other programs I use like iPhoto, iTunes, etc. work great with Leopard and should, since they are Apple programs. The only glitch I’ve run into is that for some odd reason formerly hidden files like mach_kernel have suddenly become visible in my drive’s root directory. This was caused by a backup program called Synk, which I have since deleted and will not use again. It has something to do with permissions and hidden file attributes. There are supposedly terminal level workarounds, but Apple will likely fix this in another maintenance release so for now it’s nothing but a minor annoyance.

The verdict is that Leopard is a worthy upgrade, has few issues with the hardware and software I need to do my work as an illustrator, and offers some fun stuff as well as some very useful features. I would not call it a must have upgrade, however. If you find some of your hardware or software may not play well with Leopard, I’d advise you stick with Tiger until those issues are fully resolved.

I have a moderate amount of stuff on the board right now. Today I had deadlines for two jobs, one a workplace poster and one an ad job… both “in the can” as they say in the bidness. The poster job is another of the workplace posters which I can share after I complete, so that is posted below. Other stuff right now includes:

MAD- I’m trying to wrap up that two pager from September that got bumped because I have a new one coming possibly today, and it’s going to be a really fun job. There is something to like about every MAD job, but sometimes they give me one that I really wanted to do… and this is one of those! It won’t be on the stands until #487 in February, but I’ll share it as soon as I’m able.

Multiple advertising jobs- Ad jobs used to be few and far between but I just wrapped one up for today and I have two others in the works stuck in client approval limbo. One is for a mortgage company and one for a car storage company.

Personal projects- These are starting to pile up. I often have a personal job or two I have promised to get done “in between” other jobs, and when I am super busy these get to become a tall pile of scariness. I have a glimmer of hope to get to some or all of these this week: another Sherlock Holmes audiobook illustration, the 2008 NCS Reuben Awards artwork, “turn arounds” for a 3-D animation class’s project and a personal caricature I have been promising to do for two years.

I also have some lines on two other projects that, if they come through, may make December pretty interesting. Here is that poster job, including pencils and finals. Nothing special, just a typical workmanlike cartoon illustration for this client.

Pencil sketch

Final inks and color

Q; I am an artist who also has a son who is interested in becoming an artist for a living. Do you have any advice on how to teach him the skills necessary to pursue this career?

A: I don’t know how young your son is, but with kids the most important thing is just to encourage them to keep exploring their art and artistic interests. Pablo Picasso once said:

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.“

I believe that wholeheartedly. Children see and interpret the world through eyes unclouded by preconceptions eventually forced on them by society and just plain old growing up. They find the mundane wondrous, and revel in their efforts to express themselves. As adults, we have been conditioned on how we are allowed to express ourselves by external influences. You could say that the process of growing up suppresses the creativity and objectivity we had as kids. Artistic creativity can also be a little scary, as it often requires we take risks with our emotions… for example the simple fear of the rejection of something that is very personal. Some people cannot handle that kind of vulnerability and so bury that creative streak and forget they ever had it. Encouraging kids to draw and paint, and reinforcing their efforts keeps that creative force alive. Even if that kid ends up as an accountant, having a sense of art and creativity never hurt anybody… except maybe Van Gogh.

Your question seems a little more practical than metaphysical, so perhaps I should be a little more specific. I would certainly encourage your son to explore different mediums. Perhaps for birthdays or holidays he could get different art supplies so he can try things like pastels, acrylic paints, charcoal, watercolor… there are a lot of things out there that a young artist can experiment with. You never know what will really grab him, or feel just right when he’s creating. As an artist yourself, I’m sure you can help him with many of the mediums he is introduced to.

Secondly, I would concentrate on fundamental drawing. Almost all great art, and especially the kind of commercial art or illustration that would give him the best chance of making a living in the creative fields, is based on strong drawing skills. Drawing from life is the best thing to do, but that is not the easiest thing to arrange and if your son is young working with nude models isn’t the best idea… plenty of time for that in college. There are a lot of good books on drawing and developing drawings skills, and those are fine to have. The really important thing is to keep plenty of paper or sketchbooks about, and encourage him to draw anything and everything.

Finally, seek out local resources for art. High school art teachers, local community ed classes, perhaps local artist workshops. Get him out to meet other artists and see them work. It might keep his interest peaked when he realizes how hard he will have to work to become a good artist. Again, since you are an artist yourself, he has the benefit of being able to see you work and perhaps work alongside you.

Thanks to LaShawn Johnson for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Rather than post the Dreaded Deadline Demon today since I am swamped with Monday deadlines, I’m posting a suitably lame list of links to MAD related articles, sites and other general wastes of time and drains on American productivity. Fa fa fa.

Han Shot First Dept.-

There is a nice feature about the MAD parodies of the Star Wars films over on starwars.com, including an article with Mort Drucker and a Q&A with writer Dick Debartolo. Mort was the artist on all the film parodies except the original Star Wars (Harry North did that one, but Mort later did the “musical version”) and the last one (which was illustrated by Hermann Mejia… no musical version but I did begin rhythmically snoring about 1/3 of the way through the film). Dick wrote all of the parodies. I guess George Lucas has a pretty good sense of humor… a lot better than his sense of film direction, anyway. Thanks to Jason Chalker for the heads up.

One Smoggy Day in L.A. Dept.-

A recent article in Los Angeles Citybeat magazine praises MAD for it’s continuing fearlessness in political humor. The writer makes a good point that, while it’s hardly courageous today to bash the Bush administration with their approval ratings somewhere around the “freezing point of gin”, MAD had the guts to point out absurdities and stupidity by the government even shortly after 9/11… when any criticism of the government was labeled “traitor talk”, “anti-American” and Dixie Chick CDs were being burned despite the fact that the first amendment is possibly the very definition of American freedom. He fails to mention MAD‘s emergency replacement of the cover of the very next issue to this:

…which was done at great cost to the magazine and it’s publishers, nor the very serious letter to readers within. However his point is taken.

On a similar note, MAD is often being accused these days of being a liberal, lefty rag. When asked in an interview if the magazine is ever accused of political bias, then editor Nick Meglin answered “Always… by both sides.” Editor John Ficarra is quoted on the subject in the very article linked above:

“Since its inception during the Eisenhower administration, MAD‘s policy has always been to mock the man in office. We begin each new administration with a clean slate and we wait for them to do something really stupid. (Usually that happens around day two.)”

Meglinomania Dept.-

Since I mentioned it above. Here’s that Nick Meglin interview from a few years back in Pop Cult Magazine. Nick is retired now enjoying life and writing musical comedies for the stage. He is very much missed around MAD, let me tell you. He always took me somewhere fancy for lunch when I visited the MAD offices. Beyond that… good riddance. I really miss the lunches, though. Sam Viviano‘s idea of splurging on the expense account is to let me “supersize” my value meal.

Hold the Onion Dept.-

This is an oldie but a goodie. The folks behind the humor newspaper The Onion have long been known as old MAD fans. A few years ago they did this article paying homage to the magazine in their own, unique way. MAD reciprocated later with a parody of their newspaper in an issue.

One Man’s Trash is another Man’s Magazine Dept.-

These next few links are permanently in my “MAD Links” section on the blogroll but as many readers get so fantastically bored with this blog they seldom get to that part, and because they are especially interesting or excellent resources, I will plug them here again:

The Official MAD site- The red headed stepchild of the DC universe is begrudgingly given a tiny corner of their massive web presence. Links to official message boards, current issue sneak peeks, free downloads (no porn, that you have to pay for), submission guidelines, ads to buy stuff and more. (Note to DC- Please make my check payable to “Tom Richmond”, and this one better not bounce)

Doug Gilford’s MAD Cover Site- A true monument to those with waaaaay too much time on their hands, Doug has painstakingly scanned every cover of every issue of MAD and organized it on his website. You can browse by year, alphabetically by TV or movie parody, search by keyword, look up current price value by issue number and condition… or you could call a girl and go out on a date. All kidding aside a great resource.

Mad Mumblings- The best MAD fan message boards on the internet! Of course that’s not saying much as they are the ONLY MAD fan message boards on the internet. Still, it is filled with people who would much rather search the far corners of Doug’s cover site than go on a date, so you have to respect that!

Mike Slaubaugh’s MAD Lists- Painstakingly researched and updated lists by Mike on such vital MAD statistics as yearly circulation numbers, consecutive issue streaks by contributors, total number of covers by… individual………. art……ists………………………………

……….sorry, I dozed off there for a second.

I check his “Contributor Appearances” list every month to see if I have finally passed that punk Scott Bricher in “total number of issues appeared in” yet…. Nope.

Check out individual “Usual Gang of Idiots” links also over to the right in the blogroll, as well as a few other permanent MAD links. Have fun, kids… and stay out of my yard.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something from my Wall of Shame, so I thought it was high time I featured another cool item off the wall. This one is a caricature I did as a theme park sample some years ago of comedy legend Bill Cosby.

For those newer readers, the Wall of Shame is an area just outside my studio where The Lovely Anna has framed prints of various pieces I’ve done that, through MAD, good fortune or just dumb luck I’ve had signed by the subjects I’ve caricatured. You can see my other Wall of Shame piece and stories about obtaining the signatures listed here. While most of the Wall of Shame pieces stem from parodies I’ve done of TV shows or movies, this piece and story have nothing to do with MAD.

About two years ago I was contacted by a gentleman from Kentucky named Father Jim Sichko, who is the pastor of St. Mark Catholic Church in Richmond, KY. Father Jim was the organizer of an event called “An Evening Among Friends”, a kind of speaking engagement/social gathering to benefit St. Mark and other Richmond organizations and charities. Father Jim seems to have the magic touch in getting celebrity speakers to come to a small community like Richmond to be the guests of honor. In 2005 talk show host Regis Philbin was the speaker, and in May of 2006 it was Bill Cosby.

Father Jim came across my caricature of Cosby on the internet and wanted to know if he could buy the original to present to him to show their appreciation for his participation. I thought that was a little like kicking someone in the nuts for doing you a favor, but Father Jim seemed to think it was a good idea. Of course I donated the original rather than accept any money, but I did ask that Cosby sign a print I would also send with for me.

I was sorry to see he used a blue ball point pen to sign it, as it’s tough to read or even see. However as a kid I might have worn out my Bill Cosby comedy albums from playing them over and over again… my favorite routine was the one about the snowball/slushball he has made and put in the freezer to await a summer’s day to take revenge on one of the neighborhood kids when he least expected it… it was something to have his signature on a caricature of mine.

This year’s guest at “An Evening Among Friends” is Natalie Cole. No request for a caricature of her so far….

I hope everybody is enjoying a day of eating too much among the company of family and friends.

I did this quick ink sketch yesterday as part of a header graphic for a column I’m kind of doing in a new cartoonist’s magazine called Stay Tooned!, published by John Read. I say “kind of doing” because John will be picking and choosing some of my Sunday Mailbag questions and answers for the column, and I will edit and possibly expand them for his magazine. John describes it as a “paean to the practitioners of cartooning”. I envision it as having shades of Hogan’s Alley and Cartoonist’s Profile, except his standards for contributors must be exceptionally low if I’m involved. Still, R.C. Harvey will also have a column so it will have some class…

I’ll let everyone know when the magazine is up and running, and how to get copies.