Monday MADness! MADvertising Part 2

Last week I posted about some unique advertising inserts MAD did back in 2007 and 2008, which I did some artwork for. The first one was for Ballpark Franks in MAD #480.

The second and last was in MAD #486 (and other DC Comics titles that same month). This was was not promoting a product, but rather a comedy troupe called The Whitest Kids U Know. The “WKUK” had a sketch comedy television show on the FUSE Network in 2007, which had moved to the Independent Film Channel for season two and beyond until 2011. IFC is uncensored so, unlike on FUSE, their sketches aired intact and unedited. Their material can be very adult and racy, so no doubt they and their fans were glad of the change.

Like the Ballpark Franks, project, this was an inserted “Mini-MAD” that could be removed as it’s own small publication. Mark Fredrickson did the cover, and Dick DeBartolo and Hermann Mejia did a “Get to Know the Whitest Kids U Know…” two page spread on the members of the troupe. Sam Viv… uh… Jack Syracuse, Tom Bunk, Drew Friedman and myself were called on to illustrate in comic format four of the troupe’s most famous sketches. I was assigned one called “Sexy Fawn”. Here’s the sketch from YouTube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQi4ngrlZX4[/youtube]

Here’s the rough sketch of my comic version:

Clicky to Embiggen…

And a few closeups of the finished art:

The final MAD version was “cleaned up’ considerably from the TV skit, replacing words like “sex” with “mate” and of course eliminating the profanity. There was no getting around the concept, though. The ridiculous “deer” outfit, complete with slutty clear pumps, is the funniest thing about this sketch, so I really made sure it was clearly a bad deer suit. I also tried to capture the odd movements the “deer” was making.

These ad inserts were short lived. I don’t know if they just weren’t successful for the advertisers, too expensive to produce, or what. Interesting projects, though.