Tom's Mad Blog
April 10th, 2023 | Posted in General
I just got confirmation that the incomparable Al Jaffee passed away early this morning at 102. This is a hard one. Within any art form there are some creators who are just plainly on another level than the rest. There will always be a debate about who is the G.O.A.T. in anything creative, but the sign of true greatness is always being one of the people in that conversation. Any debate about the greatest cartoonist of all time that does not include Al Jaffee is not a legitimate debate. Like so many, I grew up a fan of MAD Magazine. I loved the work of… READ MORE
April 10th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… MONDAY! That means it’s time for another super-disappointing look back at my work for MAD Magazine! It’s kinda funny (funny haha not funny strange) that I interrupted posting about this MAD job last week to share a new cover I had just done for the magazine, considering I intended to write about how I was always angling to do a cover and kept taking baby steps towards that goal with the MAD staff. This was one of those baby steps. Throughout its existence MAD has produced quite a lot of different special issues,… READ MORE
April 6th, 2023 | Posted in News
Here is a big announcement… Tom’s Caricature Workshops are BACK! I am nearing completion of CLAPTRAP, the long delayed crowdfunded book Desmond Devlin and I are doing, and I am beginning to make post CLAPTRAP plans including getting back to doing my two day “in person” caricature workshops in locations all over the U.S., and even overseas! When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was doing eight to ten workshops a year and had multiple ones lined up for the summer and fall of that year. Thanks to COVID I had to either cancel or postpone and reschedule them all. I eventually managed to get most of those in over… READ MORE
April 5th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I have mostly run out of TV shows I actually watched as a kid after school, but I’m having too much fun doing caricatures from old TV sitcoms, … so why stop now! This week’s sketch is by far the most requested from readers- Phil Silvers! I wanted to do more of the cast but elected to just draw Silvers, the incredibly goofy and funny Pvt. Doberman (Maurice Gosfield) and the eternally put-upon commanding officer Col. John T. Hall (Paul Ford). I admit I never watched “The Phil Silvers Show” as a kid, probably because it was just never syndicated on my local stations during the… READ MORE
April 3rd, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
We’ll take a short break from looking back at the work I did for MAD years ago to something new! MAD #31 comes out this week, and I did the cover for the issue. It’s been leaked online in various Facebook groups, so I guess I can share it online now. She didn’t take credit for it but MAD head honcho Suzy Hutchinson wrote this cover gag, and it’s a pretty good one. I always prefer “Alfred doing something” cover gags to “Alfred substitution” gags. It’s easy and lazy to just replace some actor in character with Alfred, and then make the other characters from… READ MORE
March 31st, 2023 | Posted in News
I’ll be at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo aka C2E2 this weekend in Artist’s Alley table Y-17! Come by and say hello if you are attending the show! This comic-con appearance is the last one I’ll be doing before CLAPTRAP is sent to the printer, and it will be a last one for many things. After this show I will no longer be doing the “live style caricature” drawings I’ve done for so long. All commissions will now be of the pen and ink variety, either line art only or in full color. I am also getting out of the “limited edition print” business…… READ MORE
March 29th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Strictly speaking “Batman” was never shown in an after school time slot, but it was a show from that same time period of the late 60’s that didn’t just entertain me, but had a major impact on my entire life. That is no exaggeration! I credit the “Batman” TV show for sending me down the path that ended up with my having a career as a cartoonist. Our sketch this week is of Adam West and Burt Ward in their titular roles as the Dynamic Duo. I was drawn to the “Batman” tv show as a very young kid… I’m talking two years old. When I heard the opening… READ MORE
March 27th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday, and we have a license to be ill looking back at another piece of my work from MAD magazine. This week we spy out mini-parodies of not one, not two, but THREE James Bond films starring Daniel Craig in “Casebook: SPYFAIL- The Battle of the Bonds” from MAD #521, June 2013, written by my CLAPTRAP collaborator Desmond Devlin. These penciled pages are true “roughs” as I just drew blank heads (and made notes as to who is supposed to be who.. although some might say I should do that even with my finished caricatures) and everything is very sketchy, meaning I must have worked out… READ MORE
