I received a note from an interested party yesterday concerning The Great MAD Art Sale (which officially ends on Monday, BTW… don’t delay, order now!) asking about original MAD cover artwork. He was looking to buy an original MAD cover, and wanted to know if I had any or if Mark Fredrickson has any originals available for sale?

My answers were: No, unfortunately I’ve never done a cover for MAD (well, two for MAD Kids and one for a MAD advertising insert… but they hardly count) and have no originals of cover art and, regarding Mark’s covers, I don’t believe any originals exist because he works 100% digitally these days. Fairness in conversation: I did the covers I just mentioned digitally as well.

Back in 2008 the last (an best) of the original cover art owned by MAD (or, more accurately the parent company of MAD: Time Warner) was sold at auction. Among them were 13 original covers done by the likes of Norman Mingo and Kelly Freas (and one chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs), that were considered the “Soul of MAD” i.e covers that represented what MAD was all about. They sold for a combined $750,000.

Legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan recently retired from doing movie posters. He worked in acrylic and mixed media doing original paintings for some of the most icon movies posters in film history. His originals routinely sell for $90,000-$150,000.

Despite that market, the days of seeing that kind of original art available for sale is rapidly coming to a close. The reason? Computers. Digital artwork is taking over the commercial art field and more and more work is being done on the computer leaving no originals to be bought, framed and admired on a wall somewhere.

Take MAD covers, for example. Mark took over as the principal MAD cover artist arguably in 2003, when 5 of the last 6 issues of the year had covers illustrated by him. Except for a handful of special covers that were cartoon characters, graphics, dual covers or by the VERY rare different artist, Mark has done every MAD cover since 2005. Mark long ago put away his airbrush and went 100% digital,so as far as I know there are no originals of any of his MAD covers. Maybe he has pencil sketches or a tight pencil drawing or something that is “original” in the sense that it was part of the process of creating the cover, but there is no piece of physical artwork that corresponds with the finished cover image with Mark.

That seems pretty sad. However it’s really a kind of return to the old days and old ways. Back in the early-mid 1900′s when magazines and periodicals ruled the world of entertainment content and advertising, commercial artwork was hardly considered “art”. Magazine covers and art for publications and ads were done with materials that gave no thought to archival quality or anything other than looking good long enough to get reproduced and then it was trash. Nobody thought of this stuff as having any secondary value. MAD publisher Bill Gaines saved every piece of art ever done for MAD as he owned it all (based on the work for hire agreement all MAD artists and writers worked under), but I doubt he had any idea that the cover art of MAD #30 would one day sell for $250,000. Commercial art was a means to an end, and once the end was achieved then that art was done being of value.

It wasn’t until the nostalgia factor took over that original commercial artwork became valuable in a secondary market. Highly visible stuff like magazine cover art, art for iconic ads and products and other commercial illustration started being collected by a new generation of adults that were weaned on things like comic books and publications and who connected with those images on a personal level and… and here’s the important thing… grew up to have both money and the attitude that they would rather hang the original artwork of a cover of Spider-Man on their wall than some modern art minimalist painting. Suddenly all that trash art from yesteryear became treasures to the pop-culture saavy new professionals of the day looking to decorate their dens. A lot of that artwork was destroyed or done with materials that plain old faded away (Dr. Martin Dyes, a popular medium of color for commercial art in the 60′s, were especially infamous for losing their color and intensity is short order) so there was also a scarcity in available originals. Even the market for original comic book art, which often was saved if only for reasons of possible future reproduction, didn’t become a real market until the kids of the 50′s and 60′s became the adults of the late 70′s and 80′s with money to spend.

The point is that the illustrators of decades ago didn’t give much of a thought about the art they did past it’s reproduction. Today’s digital artist has the same sort of mentality… an original is far less important that producing the work in a faster and more efficient manner that makes for the transition from concept to printed piece as quick and seamless as possible. So you see, it’s all a return to the past.

The sad part of that equation is all the walls bereft of original illustration art in the future.

Just another friendly reminder that The Great MAD Art Sale ends one week from today, on Dec. 20th. Some of the artwork will be available after in the “Studio Store” but gone will be the insanely expensive cheap prices and they will be even more ridiculously overpriced than they are now. There are still a number of full parody pages from movies like “Traffic” (my first movie parody in MAD), “Behind Enemy Lines”, “The Royal Tennenbaums” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” , as well as TV shows like “Scrubs”, “Entourage”, “Dog the Bounty Hunter”, “The Bernie Mac Show”, “America’s Most Wanted” and “Boston Public” for as little as $75 a page. These are gigantic 16.5″ x 21″ originals, by the way. Suitable for framing, dartboards or shoe wiping after coming in from the garage. In fact, $75 is cheaper than some floor mats I’ve seen.

There are also a number of super cheap $25 pieces, a few at $40 and $50… and all these pieces have been published in MAD (I know, big deal…)

Of course they all come signed as well. You get to choose the manner of the signature. I can sign just my name, personalize it to you or whomever you specify, or I can sign someone else’s name like “Chuck Norris” or possibly “Lady Gaga”… although I might charge you extra for that one.

Just click on the image above to see the many pieces of original MAD artwork still available! Questions? E-mail me!

BTW- Thanks to everybody who has purchased a piece of art from me… all packages have been shipped. Thanks again!

It seems that my trying to get fancy using some old fashioned HTML table coding on “The Great MAD Art Sale” page resulted in a lot of browsers (mainly Windows Internet Explorer) having trouble seeing the thumbnails and images… I’ve dispensed with tables coding so everything should be working fine now. My apologies.

Despite the technical glitches quite a few of the pieces are already gone or spoken for… thanks for those who have purchased some of this crap… uh… original art from the pages of MAD. Those who are just thinking about buying something… what are you waiting for??

Wow. The response has been overwhelming for The Great Art Blowout sale… I am practically sold out and people are clamoring for more.

I don’t have a whole lot more of these Marlin poster illustrations (I lost a lot of them over the years) , but I did have about ten that I did not include in the original blowout sale for various reasons. Some was because I felt that too much of the work had been done on the digital end, and the inked image didn’t make a lot of sense. For those I did a little filling in here and there where possible so I could scan them and add them to the list.

A few others are a little bit weirder, but maybe weird is good! These particular three I held out because they have images on the front AND back of the board… must have been out of illustration board when I got these assignments:

This one (marlin58a and b) are two illustrations on one board, front and back:

This one (marlin60a and b), the did the background on one side and foreground on another as the client wanted a layered file for animation purposes for another application:

This one is again two different illustrations front and back on one board (marlin61a and b):

You’ll find those three and eight others added… and those are all the originals I have that will be added to the Great Art Blowout… so when they are gone they are gone. Many thanks to everyone who bought one (or more) of the originals!

EDIT- WOW, these are going FAST. Don’t wait around if you want to get your favorite.

In the process or remodeling my studio I had to clean out my flat files, and while doing so I came to the following conclusion:

I have way too much original artwork laying about.

To remedy this situation I have weeded through the immense pile of original inked illustration I have done over the last decade or so for The Marlin Company’s employee subscription posters and made fifty (that’s 50!!!) of them available for the low, low price of..

$25.00 each!

That’s right! Now you can own an original inked illustration by me (oh, boy… thrilling) and also help contribute to the college funds of my children. . . or at least buy them a few double espressos for those late night study sessions.

Here’s a few example of some of the pieces available at the Great Art Blowout Sale!:

There are a lot of different subject matters and themes to the illustrations. All are 17″ x 17″ (art size, except a few noted otherwise) and inked by brush and dip pen on Strathmore illustration board. All are good examples of inked line illustration. Visit the Great Art Blowout Sale page here to see what’s available and for more details. And, naturally, I will sign the artwork despite the buyer’s inevitable protestation that I do not.

This is the only one that is a little more . . . I am selling for $100: OOPs, this one sold!

. . . which is still a great deal as this is a fully painted 17′” x 17″ original done in watercolor ink and airbrush. It’s actually the only traditionally painted poster illustration I ever did for The Marlin Company, and is in fact the FIRST one I ever did for them years ago.

If you have have an interest in any of these originals, simply e-mail me.

My flat files are overflowing and my walls are covered with originals, so it’s time to start selling off some of the artwork I just don’t have room for anymore. Not mine… I can’t give that crap away. No, this piece I just put up on eBay is by legendary caricature illustrator Bruce Stark, and was published in TV Guide back in April of 1984:

Click for a closer look…

I bought this from Bruce a number of years ago. It’s a gorgeous acrylic painting measuring 14″ x 18″, showcasing his immense talents. My reserve is very low considering Bruce charges $1,000.00 for an original like this. It would make a great gift for a caricaturist or a terrific resource for studying a master’s illustration work. Included is the tear sheet from the 24 year old issue of TV Guide, and if the winner e-mails me saying they are a reader of The MAD Blog, I’ll throw in a piece of my original MAD artwork which should be good to use as a coaster for your coffee. Here’s a link to the auction.