Several people expressed an interest in getting a copy of my signed and numbered, limited edition print, “Secret Agent Man” if I had any left after Comic-Con… well, I have plenty left. They were popular and stopped a lot of people in their tracks as they walked by, but I had a LOT of them. There were 250 total, 11″ x 17″, all signed and numbered… more than half of them are still available.

The print sold for $25 at Comic-Con. Anyone who wants a copy can get one for $20 and plus $5 domestic shipping or $8 international.

Choose your shipping option!

Print w/U.S. Shipping $25.00 Print w/International Shipping $28.00

Personalized? Details:

Comic-Con is over and I’m on my way back to Minnesota. Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

Number one son Tom mans the booth…

Drawing a caricature of some kids

The Big MAD Panel: From L to R: Host Mark Evanier, Sergio Aragonés,
editor John Ficarra, art director Sam Viviano, Dick Debartolo,
Peter Kuper, myself, Keith Knight.

Me answering a question

Not sure how this picture got mixed up in here…

They put me up on the video board just like the real artists
when I signed at the DC Comics booth.

Doing a drawing for a MAD fan

It was fun, and exhausting. Sitting at my drawing board in my studio getting caught up with work will seem like a vacation.

I’ll be signing free copies of MAD (I think) at the DC Comics booth (#1915) at Comic-Con on the following days and times:

• Thursday, July 21: 2-3pm
• Friday, July 22: 1-2pm
• Sunday, July 24: 10:30-11:30am

As I don’t have any copies of MAD at my booth, this will be the place to go to get the freebee signed. Then you can take it over to Sergio‘s booth and get him to sign it, and Peter Kuper, and who knows who else!

I’ll mostly be at my booth all other times, except when I’m not.

Comic-Con bound!

Click for a closer look…

If you are one of the lucky million people who will be attending the San Diego Comic-Con this Thurs-Sun, you can get one of these limited edition, signed/numbered, 11″x 17″ prints entitled “Secret Agent Man” in one of two ways:

First, you can visit my booth (#4616) and buy one for $25. I’ll sign it for you. For that kind of money, I’ll even sign my real name.

Second, you can visit my booth and pre-order a copy of my book, The Mad Art of Caricature, and get the print for free! Whadda deal. (Actually, you can either get the free print, or get free shipping. Only at Comic-Con!)

The complete run on this print is 250 copies (plus a handful of artist’s proofs). Once they are gone, they are gone.

If I have any left over after Comic-Con, I will offer them for sale here for the same $25 plus whatever shipping is. Sorry, they won’t be given away with any orders of the book anywhere but at Comic-Con.

My official schedule at Comic-Con is slowly coming into focus, but still has a lot of question marks. However this panel was just announced:

Thursday, July 22nd:

4:30-5:30 MAD Men— What’s up with America ‘s most famous humor magazine (that is, if you don’t count Newsweek)? Your genial moderator Mark Evanier quizzes the Usual Gang of Idiots: editor John Ficarra, art director Sam Viviano, writer Dick DeBartolo and artists Sergio Aragonés, Peter Kuper, Tom Richmond, and Keith Knight. Room 8

That one will be fun, especially moderated by the insanely busy Mark Evanier, who moderates just under 1,000 panels every Comic-Con. Per day.

Otherwise I will be at booth #4616 all the rest of the con. Except when I’m not there.

Q: I’ve read on your blog that you have appeared at a couple of comic book conventions, especially San Diego Comic Con. I’m wondering why you don’t do more conventions like New York, Chicago or Atlanta? You should get your own booth.

A: Realistically there are only two reasons to get a booth space at a comic book convention: either to directly sell something or to promote the later sale of something. I haven’t really had either to do before, so getting my own booth at multiple comic cons doesn’t make much sense financially.

The promotion angle doesn’t fit for me because the only thing I really have to promote would be MAD. As much as I like working with them, spending (in some cases a lot) of my own money to promote MAD by buying booth space at comic cons would be silly as I don’t get royalties on sales, and MAD/DC  Comics have their own giant booths at these conventions so they’d hardly be interested in paying for my space. If I am at a convention they always set up times for me to sign copies and do sketches at their booth, but MAD is just one of a lot of comics and graphic novels that DC Comics publishes, and sort of a red-headed stepchild at that, so having a dedicated MAD space is again something they probably wouldn’t go for.

I also haven’t had anything of my own to promote or sell before that would justify the expenses and time involved. Artists like my pal Steve Silver and others have made comic-cons a cottage industry for themselves by self-publishing books/sketchbooks and then selling them at their own booth space. They will also promote their own comics, other publications or internet endeavors like Schoolism, which leads to further commerce. Promoting “The MAD Blog”, which is fun to keep up but nets me basically zero income, also doesn’t make sense. I’ve never been able to bring myself to print something as seemingly narcissistic as an “Art of Tom Richmond” sketchbook, and I am unconvinced such a thing would sell past the usual incestuous “I’ll buy yours if you’ll buy mine” dynamic and the small core group of industry followers whose purchases fuel the sales of a many of these self published materials.

Other kinds of things that artists do at comic cons are selling original art and doing original sketches. While that is cool and all it seldom pays the expenses unless you are a really famous or notable artist. Guys like Sergio can do that kind of thing but guys like me… not so much. My few attempts at selling originals from MAD at comic cons have only netted a few sales, and things like sketches or caricatures don’t sell as well as you might think at these events, and least not for me.

Actually there is a third reason for having a booth space at a comic con… just to be there and participate in the event, meet fans and other cartoonists, etc. You can do that without paying for a booth space however, and there are free or low cost options like “Artist’s Alley” but the waiting list there is long in most cases, so it’s tough to get in. Also regardless if you pay or do not pay for a space, there is a lot of time involved in being in these shows. I certainly cannot afford to do more than one a year.

All that said, things have changed a little for me this year. I actually will have something to sell this time, and I have reserved my own space at the San Diego Comic Con for this summer. I’ll be at booth #4616 (if all goes according to plan) where I will be debuting my long awaited and much procrastinated on book of drawing caricatures. You heard it here first, and I have officially painted myself into a corner by promising it. Unless unforeseen circumstances like the end of the world, the maiming of my drawing arm or horrifically late final print delivery derails me, that is the plan. Of course I’ll also be doing sketches, caricatures and selling original MAD artwork as well as the book. I’ll also be spending some time at the National Cartoonists Society booth and likely signing copies of MAD at the DC booth.

As for other comic cons, I don’t think time will permit me to do the kind of tours that guys like Silver do. If things go well at San Diego, maybe more comic cons will be in the future for me. Who knows?

Thanks to Richard Griffin 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!

Comic-Con 2010 is “in the books” as they say and it was it’s usual exhausting but fun time. This year I did a lot of new things including being on a panel about MAD and the new cartoon show and participating as a guest artist in “Quick Draw” with regulars Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and host Mark Evanier.

There was a lot of interest in the MAD show on Cartoon Network, premiering on Sept. 6th and featuring some of my artwork. Here is an interview with producer Peter Giradi and head writer and producer. Kevin Shinick… you will spot me once or twice at the WB signing we did and on the panel:

That was pretty cool. Kevin and Peter are creative and funny guys and they really “get” MAD, so I hope the show will really take off. There are a few short clips in the video but none of the stuff I worked on.

My “Quick Draw” appearance was especially fun. Basically it’s an entertaining show where fore mentioned cartoonists Sergio and Scott sit up on stage with one other guest cartoonist (in this case William Stout) and draw on boards with projectors so the entire audience can see what they are doing. They then do super fast drawings around themes and games that have the crowd roaring. Usually Mark has three guest artists come up and play a game for a short time, and this year he asked me to be one of the guests… naturally I was thrilled and of course got mercilessly paired with Sergio. The game we played was … well, just read Mark’s post about it.

Other than that I got to hang out with some super talented cartoonists, do a little drawing and signing and drink a lot of beer. Here are just a few pictures:

Hey! It’s Bart Man!

Hey! It’s the guy who created Bartman! Jeff Keane with The Simpsons’ Matt Groening

Thought this was a great costume… MAD Eye Moody!

Jeff Keane, R.C. Harvey and Stephen Pastis

From the WB Booth’s loft… the floor’s other end is literally too far to see.

MAD show writer/producer Kevin Shinick and MAD Magazine editor
John Ficarra hangin’ in the WB green room

MAD artist and art director Sam Viviano

..jiggety jig. Flying back home from Comic-Con today… full wrap up tomorrow hopefully with lots of pictures.

Picture by Tom Racine

We are going to dispense with the Sunday Mailbag this week in order to continue with our annoying coverage of San Diego Comic-Con.

Yesterday was a busy day for me here, starting with the Mad About MAD panel at 10:00 am and then signings at both the DC Comics booth and the Warner Bros booth with fellow MAD men Sam Viviano and John Ficarra, and MAD animated show writer and producer Kevin Shinick, plus a surprise appearance on at the Quick Draw! program in between. I wish I had some pictures of the panel but unfortunately I do not. Tom Racine of Tall Tall Radio fame was kind enough to send me the picture above from one of my signings at the DC booth earlier in the weekend. Speaking of Tall Tale Radio, go to the link in the previous sentence to see some great Comic Con coverage.

The panel discussion went well. I got the opportunity to see some of the animations for the first time, including about 5 seconds of one of the segments I worked on. The show is going to consist of a lot of different types of animation from somewhat traditional to collage to stop motion and a lot of different styles of art. Each 5 minute episode will consist of as many as 20 different segments, some as long as 2-3 minutes and some as short as 10 seconds. Many of the segments shown on the “sizzle reel” got good laughs and it was obvious that the show will be very much like the magazine… short bits of comedy one after the other satirizing pop culture, movies, TV and other things the world takes too seriously. Overall the response was very positive to the footage. I don’t think the video they showed will be posted on the internet (legally, meaning by WB or Cartoon Network) but if it is I will certainly link to it. As far as my work on it is concerned, in my very quick glimpse I thought I could see my artwork peeking through after the necessary adjustments the animators had to make… it will be fun to see a whole episode.

Sam and John did a presentation on the history of MAD which got big laughs and each of us on the panel told a few stories about how we discovered MAD and how we ended up working on the magazine. The audience asked a few questions and we were whisked off to sign copies of the magazine at the DC booth.

I’ve got a few people who have promised to send me pictures of the events, so when I do a full wrap up of the Comic-Con I’ll hopefuly have those to share.

In the meantime, today is the last day of the con and I will be signing free copies of MAD (until they run out) at the DC Comics booth (#1915) from 12:30-1:30 and drawing and selling MAD originals at the National Cartoonists Society booth (#1307) from 2:00-4:00. Then I will be laying down with a cold compress over my forehead for several hours.