As promised, here’s the splash and some of the art from the parody of “Modern Family” in the latest issue of MAD:

Click for a closer look…

So, like my flashback with Christina Applegate and the parody of “Samantha Who?” a few years ago, I once again am revisiting my “Bundys” roots and drawing another “Married… with Children” alumni. This time it’s Ed O’Neill:

Can Katey Sagal (currently in “Sons of Anarchy”) or David Faustino (currently in… uh….) be far behind?

On news stands tomorrow and in comic book shops today:

MAD # 509 (June 2011)

• Cover (Mark Fredrickson)
• $#*! My Son Says (Jeff Kruse)
• The Fundalini Pages (Jeff Kruse, Tom Bunk, Jacob Lambert, Sergio Aragonés, Scott Maiko, Kenny Keil, Mort Drucker, Desmond Devlin, Chris Houghton, Sam Viviano, Tom Bland, Emily Flake, Charles Akins, John Caldwell, Tom Cheney, Rick Tulka)
• MAD Libyan (Uncreditied)
• Muddled Family (Arnie Kogen, Tom Richmond)
• Kanye West’s Most Moronic Tweets (Jacob Lamber, Sam Sisco)
• The Strip Club (Vic Black, Douglas Paszkiewicz, Jason Coates, Peet Tamburino, Nate Fakes, Christopher Baldwin)
• A Letter from Taco Bell (Dick Debartolo)
• Signs That Your Hypochondria Is Out Of Control (Teresa Burns Parkhurst)
• Planet TAD!!!!! (Tim Carvell, Brian Durniak)
• MAD’s THOR-ougly Stupid THOR Outtakes (Uncredited)
• MAD’s 11 Little-Known, Practical, Real-Life Uses for Ballet (Mike Craig, Jack Syracuse)
• Spy vs Spy (Peter Kuper)
• The MAD Vault -MAD #180, January 1976 (Don Martin)
• Dancing With The Star Wars (Dave Croatto, Hermann Mejia)
• Sheen It? (Uncredited)
• Things You Don’t Want to Hear from a Marriage Counselor (Jeff Kruse, Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer)
• A MAD Look At Hoaders (Sergio Aragonés, Tom Luth)
• Similarities And Differences Between The Spider-Man Musical And The War In Afghanistan (Ward Sutton)
• The 50 Worst Things about Facebook (Charlie Kadau, Jason Katzenstein, Joe Masterman, Jason Salas, Bob Staake)
• One Fine Day on Main Street (Michael Gallagher, Paul Coker)
• MAD Fold-In (Al Jaffee)
• Drawn Out Dramas (Sergio Aragonés)

My contribution this issue is a six page parody of the TV show “Modern Family” written by Arnie Kogen, look for a sneak peek at that tomorrow.

What are you waiting for, clod?!? Go out and buy a fershlugginer copy already!

Q: Do you do personal commissions, and how much would you charge?

A: I get this one a lot, so every few years I repost the answer because, if anything, it’s even more accurate than it used to be.

I really hate my answer to this frequent question, but realistically I have no other answer to give. No, I am very sorry to all who inquire, but I had to stop doing personal commissions a long time ago. Due to a plain old lack of physical time I have to often turn down very high paying freelance publication or advertising jobs. If I accepted personal commissions, I would have to turn down even more of the freelance work. For a while I tried charging the kind of prices I would get for a publication illustration in order to justify the studio time taken for commissions, but I just couldn’t bring myself to charge that kind of money for personal work. I know that sometimes I mention personal commissions, but the very, VERY few I do are special circumstances for friends, professional colleagues or clients.

I really do feel badly when I have to turn these down, but there just isn’t enough time in the day.

Thanks to various 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 your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

The icade console for the iPad. Combined with Atari’s Greatest Hits app, which brings over 100 classic video games to the iPad, this console will mimic the joystick/button play of classic games like Asteroids, Missle Command and Centipede. Pac-Man cannot be far behind.

This started out as an April Fools joke from Think Geek, and it’s now about to go on sale… just like the Tauntaun carcass sleeping bag!

Think you know how to flush a toilet? Pick a zit? Reel in the world’s ugliest fish? Play the new MAD game on the Cartoon Network website and find out.

Sorry no sketch o’the week this week as I am in Massachusetts setting up our operation at Six Flags New England for the 2011 season.

The Hundreds visits the offices of MAD, no longer on MADison Avenue (okay, they moved from there decades ago) but still a fun place to see. If you look closely you can see the bottom of my original of the splash from “Harry Plodder and the Torture of the Fanbase” just above Hermann’s original from “Road to Perdition” in art director Sam Viviano‘s office. Sam and I had a deal for years that we would trade originals sometime. He gave me the art from his parody of “Halloween” from MAD #376. Then he said he would wait until I actually did something GOOD for the magazine for his original. He finally got tired of waiting and settled for that Harry Potter piece.

Go visit this post for a virtual tour of the MAD offices.

The 112th Congress Edition of Bobble Rep should be available in the Apple App Store soon now… just awaiting Apple’s approval. Of course, you never know with Apple. Maybe this time they’ll decide my artwork was racist because 90% of the caricatures I did were of old, white guys. Well, this is the U.S. Congress after all.

Just for fun film director and app creator Ray Griggs had me do bobblehead versions of the people who produced the program, so above is my bobblehead. Another old, white guy.

Anyway, look for that updated app with 107 new congressional caricatures coming soon.

Q: I’m a hard working freelance cartooning/comic making guy with a few decent clients and long studio hours. I work at an art related job during the day, and at night I do two different comics for a regular client as well as many freelance caricature commissions. I want to help boost my commissions and find some more good clients. Any advice on growing as a freelancer?

A: I get a lot of “How do I break into freelancing” type questions, but not too many from people already finding work but looking for more. Honestly the advice I’d give those just getting started and those already on the road is basically the same.

There are two aspects to successful freelancing:

1. Finding work
2. Doing a good job when you get the work

Number one is nothing more than marketing your work. The best methods are a strong web presence combined with direct postcard or 1/2 page card mailings to potential clients. The latter is to drive client traffic to the former. This can be very cost effective if you do your own legwork to put together a mailing list. Identify publishers, publications, ad agencies, etc who you think your work would appeal to and just send them your postcards on a regular basis (new ones each time… perhaps 4 mailings a year). You can spend money for things like iSpot or sourcebook ads, but I wouldn’t recommend that at first. Direct marketing yields better results for less money.

The second point involves not just doing great art, but doing a great JOB.There is no trick or secret for that beyond working hard, meeting and exceeding expectation for clients and building your reputation as a reliable freelancer who delivers good work on time and is easy to work with. That’s really it. You’d be surprised how few freelancers really accomplish all of those important elements consistently. The world is full of very talented illustrators working at copy centers because they can’t meet a deadline or they get defensive when an art director does some actual art direction on their work instead of just saying “that is go great!”. Doing a great job results in additional jobs from that same client and referral jobs as well. Client retention and a core group of clients that provide steady work is a must if you want to make a stable living freelancing.

Making a living as a freelancer is all about building a client base that will support you and then continually looking to expand that base so you can get more work and replace work you lose when a base client becomes a former client. This takes time, but it sounds like you have a great start and are already well past the “breaking in” part. As you build your client base, you gradually replace lower paying clients with higher paying ones as you climb the ladder.

Hard work and perseverance pays off. Good luck to you!

Thanks to R. Casey 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 your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

Super Hero media saturation is really reaching outrageous proportions these days. Since the success of the Spider-Man, Batman and now Iron Man films, Hollywood can’t get enough of superheroes. Films on the way from Marvel include Thor, Captian America, X-Men: First Class and supposedly followed by the Avengers featuring both Iron Man and the Hulk, a reboot of Spider-Man and another Wolverine. On the DC side, Green Lantern is coming out shortly with a third Batman and yet ANOTHER reboot of Superman on the horizon. Even television is getting in on the act. A new series featuring on Wonder Woman is shooting a pilot for NBC.

As DC just did an “reboot” (I am really getting sick of that word) of Wonder Woman in their comics I don’t know if that storyline is what will be followed in the show or not. The biggest “buzz” is about her new outfit.

Sequential Tart, among others, are busy debating the problems with the outfit with observations like “no intelligent crime-fighting woman is going to wear heels all day long (you don’t see policewomen wearing heels do you?)”… well, actually on TV you DO, since every female TV detective is not only wearing high heels all day long but seems to always be a total hottie knockout as well… and “The size. It’s just too small. It looks like a one-piece that she was practically shoe-horned into. It’s stretched so tight, her breasts are about ready to pop out — and if she runs or fights, they will.”

That’s all in good fun, but I’d point out that the realistic functionality of the clothing a superhero is wearing pales a bit to the fact that we are talking about a COMIC BOOK SUPERHERO who likely possesses powers that are impossible in the world of real physics (a 130 lb woman could not lift a car no matter how strong she was), so who cares if her heels aren’t sensible???? If you are going to pretend she can leap across a 40 foot street you might as well pretend she can do it in six inch heels.

Besides, let’s face it. Wonder Woman’s costume has always been one of the silliest in comicbookdom. The thing is, it does have it’s plus side… if I were a crook and was confronted by this:

I’d surrender immediately. Yes, ma’am!