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As promised, above is the splash page and here are some images from the parody of “Mad Men” in MAD #508.. written by Arnie Kogen:

All images © 2010 E.C. Publications/MAD Magazine, used with permission.

Click for a closer look…

My usual reply to MAD art director Sam Viviano when he calls and asks me if I’ve ever seen the TV show he is about to assign me the parody art for is “Never seen it”. That’s because I really don’t watch much TV… but this one was different.

The few shows I do watch are usually because my kids or The Lovely Anna watch them, and thus I see them through osmosis. Even so I usually just casually catch some bits and pieces and don’t get very interested. However, “The Big Bang Theory” is one of the family’s favorite shows, and is one that I usually put on the brakes for, sit down and actually watch when I see they have it playing on the old DVR. I think it’s a very funny show, and the comic book/sci fi geek references are not lost on me. Case in point: My kids looked aghast at me the other night when I mentioned before Sheldon did that the writing on the One Ring from the Lord of the Rings was not Elvish but in the language of Mordor, but written in Elvsh script, and then recited what it said as the characters on the show did. That earned me the classic “ohmygoddadisatotalgeek” look.

So, I was thrilled to get to do the art for the parody, written by the inimitable Desmond Devlin. Here are a couple of other sneak peek images… you’ll have to buy a copy of the issue to help keep the Usual Gang of Idiots employed to see the rest:

Click for a Closer Look

MAD had a difficult dilemma concerning their proposed parody of the movie “Watchmen”… the question of when to do it.

For once the problem was not in getting a reliable advanced script. MAD occasionally tries doing movie parodies prior to the release of the films, so that they will be on the stands around the same time the films were hot. This doesn’t always work out, as the source material the writers would work from were often leaked scripts that didn’t turn out to be accurate… like the time we got the ending wrong for “X-Men 2″. Supposedly the source material obtained for the parody was rock solid… so that was not the problem.

The problem was the timing of the movie and that of the magazine. They couldn’t do it in #499, because that was slated for release in mid-February and MAD‘s parent company, Time Warner, didn’t want any spoilers revealed before the Warner Bros. film debuted. They didn’t want to do it in issue #500 in April, as they felt it would get lost in the shuffle of that anniversary number and they wanted the parody to anchor the issue. Of course we now know that #501 won’t be out until late summer , so that would be way too late.

Interestingly the powers that be at DC and Time Warner agreed that, if MAD delayed the shipping of #499 until late February they could do the parody and run it in that issue. Apparently “Watchmen” was to be released earlier in Japan and/or elsewhere overseas. With the internet being what it is, they figured that spoilers that might be revealed… like, say an entirely NEW ENDING… would hardly be kept a secret once the movie was in theaters somewhere. (more…)

MSNBC reports about a criminal case in Pennsylvania involving two judges who allegedly accepted over 2.6 million dollars in kickbacks for sentencing minors to dentention/correctional facilities, including a girl who’s crime was creating a parody of her vice principal.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

My God. If drawing caricatures of your high school’s authority figures was punishable by jailtime, I’d be in permanent solitary confinement right next to Hannibal Lecter in some dungeon somewhere.

The young lady in the story and video created a parody MySpace page that lampooned her high school’s vice principal. For that she got sentenced to a work camp for several weeks. She is only one of hundreds of kids that these two Pennsylvania judges sentenced to time at two different privately run youth detention centers. Many of these kids apparently were not represented by a lawyer nor told they had the right to one. Their “hearings” often lasted only a minute or two.  They were then sent to the youth prisons for minor offenses like “stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia” and… caricaturing their vice principal. According to the article many of these kids had no prior records or had ever been in trouble before.

All kidding about “getting sent up the river for drawing a caricature” aside, if this doesn’t make you sick to your stomach you are not human. Imagine being a young kid who did something harmless but stupid and found yourself locked up with possibly some real bad apples just so some dirtbag judge could line his pockets.

Hopefully they send these guys to a real prison, tell the other prisoners they were judges who sentenced people to do time in exchange for money, and then wish them a nice day.

Q:  I notice in the “Ironic, Man” Mad movie parody that there are caricatures of George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden as well as a guy with an egg frying on his head. My question is: How much artistic licence do you have when it comes to producing the parodies? Do the ideas of putting Bush and Bin Laden in the picture stem from you or does the writer determine those sight gags?

A: I have a great deal of artistic license when it comes to adding sight gags within the art of a parody or any MAD piece. In fact, the editors greatly encourage the artists to add such things as much as possible. In most cases any visual gags, like the examples you cited above in the “Ironic, Man” splash that do not relate in any way to any of the word balloon text will be “artist written” gags. In rare cases the writer will add an “art note” where he/she envisions an unrelated sight gag in a given panel… for example in the parody I did of “X-Men 2″, writer Desmond Devlin suggested in a panel where Prof. X and Magneto were playing chess I instead have them playing “Hungry, Hungry Hippos”.

Very funny that one, and I did it. However this is very rare… usually the artist is free to add the visual gags on their own and the writer leaves them to it, just as the artist does not suggest different written gags… we sort of stay off each other’s turf.

MAD art director and longtime MAD artist Sam Viviano always likens doing a movie or TV parody (or “continuity piece” as the MAD editors call such jobs) to juggling… in order to do it well you must keep many balls in the air at the same time. The artist on a continuity piece needs to:

1. Design the layout using strong comic book (visual) storytelling
2. Work within the restrictions dictated by the word box placements (character order, etc)
3. “Sell the gag” i.e. reinforce the written gag with the art, either via appropriate visual setting or through character interaction, expression and action
4. Draw convincing caricatures of the actors in various angle, expressions, action, etc.
5. Add visual gags and other humorous elements in the art

That last one is where the artist becomes more than just an illustrator and contributes to the humor in a combination artist/writer capacity. Don’t get me wrong, even without adding visual gags the artist on any MAD article contributes a lot to the humor of the piece. Just plain funny drawings can add a lot, and properly “selling the gag” will make the written jokes funnier or at least more clear. Still, it’s the addition of humor from another direction that I feel adds the extra layers to any MAD piece. That is Will Elder‘s “Chicken Fat” technique in action. It’s that part I spend a lot of time and thought on whenever I do a continuity piece for MAD.

I break visual gags into four categories: parallels, peripherals, cameos and running gags. Three can be seen in that splash page you referred to earlier from “Ironic, Man”:

Click for a closer look

1. Parallels- these are gags that relate in a fundamental way to the subject matter. For example if I am drawing a parody of “The Sopranos” any visual gags I might add that has to do with the mob, New Jersey, McMasions, etc would be “parallel” gags. In the “Ironic, Man” splash the gags dealing with military stuff are parallels. Also the bra coming out of Stark’s pocket and the “product placement” label on the cell phone refer to elements from the movie.
2. Peripherals- These are gags that are coming from “outside the box”… mostly related to only superficial elements of the scene or subject. Making the round targeting “eye” of the missile cluster on the right into the “Death Star” is an example of that kind of thing. They are added gags that sometimes seem a bit like non sequiturs, but are really referencing less prevalent elements of a subject.
3. Cameos- These can be of both a parallel or peripheral nature. In the above example, Bush, Bin Laden and Lynddie England are cameos of a peripheral nature… relating not directly to the story but to the war on terror and the military. Other examples might be when I throw cartoon characters into panels based on their having some correlation with the scene. The Monster Cereal characters in “Van Helsing” or Popeye on the naval ship in “Behind Enemy Lines” are examples of that.
4. Running gags- these are gags that show up continuously throughout the pages of a parody. Part of the humor is just that they are there so many times. These can be any of the previous three types as well. An example of that might be in my “30 Rock” parody when I drew Rachel Dratch cameos in multiple panels as she often shows up playing different roles on the show. Another might be the ever-changing t-shirt slogans I did on “Dog the Bounty Hunter’s” well endowed wife in that parody.

Adding visual gags is a big part of the fun for me. You can tell how much I am “into” a piece by how many visual gags I add in. The MAD editors do edit those gags as well, sometimes asking me to remove or alter them at need… but that is also rare.

Thanks to Daniel Moir from Australia 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!

Here’s some of the art for the parody of “The Dark Knight” in this month’s issue of MAD:

Pencil rough- Click for a closer look…

Final Inks- Click for a closer look…

Finished splash page- Click for a closer look…

Here are a few of the other panels. This was a rare six page parody and as you can imagine a lot of fun to do:

This was all over the internet yesterday… when I first heard about it I thought it might have been a hoax but apparently it was accurate. Hard to believe. This was first reported on The Consumerist website via an anonymous tipster.

In MAD #492 there was a 4 page article spoofing a Circuit City Sunday newspaper ad in typical MAD fashion. As it turns out, a few Circuit City stores carry some magazines including, you guessed it, MAD. Overzealous corporate operations executive Elizabeth Barron sent out this mass corporate e-memo (courtesy of The Consumerist):

That’s right, she (and by osmosis Circuit City itself) wanted all copies of MAD removed from their stores post haste and DESTROYED. I think somebody must have recently returned their sense of humor within 14 days of purchase (with or without a receipt). I really thought this was probably a hoax, as I thought that nobody could possibly be that stupid as to do something like that. Did she really think that would not get out? The last time I checked, that original story on The Consumerist has 1285 Diggs. If her goal was to minimize the exposure of the piece, I would say that backfired… wouldn’t you?

However somebody at Circuit City realized how ridiculous that was, and quickly made a classy and surprisingly amusing response to MAD and The Consumerist to retract the initial thin-skinned reaction. Here’s the letter that was sent to the editors at MAD, via Dick DeBartolo’s GizWizBiz.com:

To: The Editors of MAD Magazine
From: Jim Babb, Embarrassed PR Guy, Circuit City Stores, Inc.

Dear Editors,

We sell magazines at a few dozen of our Circuit City stores nationwide, and by now you may have heard that some overly-sensitive souls at our corporate headquarters ordered the removal of the August issue of MAD Magazine, which features a clever parody of our company’s newspaper ad. Most of us here share a rich sense of humor and irony…but there are occasional temporary lapses.

We apologize for the knee-jerk reaction, and have issued a retraction order; the affected stores are being directed to put the magazines back on sale.

As a gesture of our apology and deep respect, we are creating a cross-departmental task force to study the importance of humor in the corporate workplace and expect the resulting Powerpoint presentation to top out at least 300 pages, chock full of charts, graphs and company action plans.

In addition, I would like to send you a $20.00 Circuit City Gift Card, toward the purchase of a Nintendo Wii….if you can find one!

All best wishes, and keep up the good work!

Jim Babb
Corporate Communications
Circuit City Stores, Inc.

Dick also included MAD editor John Ficarra‘s response:

Speaking from the magazine’s international headquarters, MAD Editor John Ficarra said, “We at MAD were shocked and confused by this entire incident — mainly because we had no idea that Circuit City even sells magazines. Nonetheless, we accept their apology but hold out hope that their gesture of a $20 gift card is only an opening offer.” JF

Great response, and I have to give Mr. Babb credit for wiping that egg off his face with a little MAD-like panache. No credit whatsoever is forthcoming to Ms. Barron. Yeeecch.

On the other hand, all the mentions of Circuit City here on The MAD Blog will likely cause my Google Ads to display Circuit City ads. Genius marketing? Meh.

I have to admit I was pretty stoked to get assigned the art chores on MAD‘s parody of “Iron Man“, as it was one of the movies I was looking the most forward to seeing this summer. I saw it twice (on opening day) as I usually do when drawing the parody… once to just watch it and once to study it for the parody. I sometimes see it a third time once I have read the script so I can pay special attention to the visuals during scenes I know are going to correspond to panels in the parody. While I didn’t make it to a third viewing, I can say this was one of the rare times I sat through two screenings in one day and wasn’t bored out of my mind the second time. Great movie.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to make fun of! Far from it. Someone once asked me if I preferred to do parodies of things I liked or of things I hated. The answer to that is: yes. It’s always more fun to do a parody of something you feel strongly about, either positively or negatively… it’s the things you feel indifferent to that are difficult to work on.

I promised to tell a little behind-the-scenes story of how this parody almost didn’t make it into the actual magazine, but first here is the sneak peek at the splash, a rough and some of the panels from the spoof:

Here’s the splash page
Click for a closer look…

The initial pencil rough
Click for a closer look…

Here are a few panels from the rest of the parody:

The call for this came just before the movie came out. Des Devlin did the script over the opening weekend and I was drawing it by the middle of the following week… that is insanely fast for MAD, which usually has a much longer process of assessing the movie’s “parody-worthiness”, assigning the script, editing the script, laying out the results and then assigning the art and sending it all out to the artist. Des, the editors and the art department all went crazy and did it in just a few days. I had about 3 weeks to do the art, which at 5 pages wasn’t too bad of a deadline. Unfortunately Memorial Day weekend was at the end of that time and the NCS Reuben Awards as well, plus a few other jobs and the opening of my theme park operation in Minnesota… so it was a bit of a challenge.

Deadline conquered, artwork turned in on time. Later in June, however, I heard through the grapevine that the parody might not make issue #492. I called up the MAD offices upset that it was somehow my fault and the parody was either getting pushed back or not run. MAD art director Sam Viviano reassured me it had nothing to do with me or the final results. They were simply thinking about using it in a different manner.

If you go to the San Diego Comic Con later this month, you’ll see what I am talking about. MAD has put together a special “Comic Con” issue that will be given away in the convention goodie bags and NOWHERE ELSE… totally exclusive to Comic Con attendees. They considered putting “Ironic, Man” in that special issue briefly, but decided against it. I saw an advanced copy of the Comic Con issue when I visited the MAD offices in NYC a few weeks ago, and the content is clever, funny and very well done. I think it will be a big hit with convention goers. I can’t devulge any more details, but I hope we members of the Usual Gang of Idiots all get copies.

Here’s a quick sneak peek at some of the artwork on the parody of “30 Rock” I did for the most recent issue of MAD:

Pencil Roughs for Splash Page- Click for a closer look…

Final Splash- Click for a closer look

I also really enjoyed the show itself, which I found clever and funny. It’s always better, considering the time it takes to do one of these, to have some emotional reaction to the subject matter from which to draw energy. Love it or hate it, either give you some source with which to work. Indifference is the killer… that’s when it becomes difficult to “get into it” and it shows in the final work.