MAD About Dallas!

“YEEEEE-HAW?”

Next weekend I will be in Dallas Texas to be a guest at the Saturday-only North Texas Comic Book Show, which is doing a special “MAD” event with guest artists and writers from the magazine. Joining me will be cartoonist David DeGrand, who does the features “Ain’t Life DeGrand” and “Patience Man” in MAD‘s “The Fundalini Pages” and “The Strip Club” sections respectively, “Bitterman” cartoonist Garth Gerhart, writer Kit Lively, who has contributed to “The Fundalini Pages” and “The Strip Club” as well as other features, and the special guest of honor Annie Gaines Ashton! Annie is the widow of MAD founder and publisher Bill Gaines, and was a big part of the magazine back when Bill was around.

I met Garth years ago at one of the now defunct MAD holiday parties, so it will be good to see him again. I’ve never met Annie, David or Kit, so I am really looking forward to that. I did the art on a MAD 20 piece that Kit and fellow UGOI member Scott Nickel wrote a year or two ago:

Clicky to Embiggen…

No doubt Kit will be pleased to finally be able to tell me how badly I mangled his gags.

This is kind of an unprecedented gathering of members of the Usual Gang of Idiots, because this might be the first time I’ve seen only recently joined contributors as the sole guests (Annie aside). Most celebrations of MAD center around the legends of the past like Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, or others who don’t have work in the magazine anymore, or folks like Al Jaffee, Paul Coker and Sergio who are “50 year men”. That’s all great and these geniuses deserve to be honored every chance we get to do so, but it’s refreshing to see names like Garth, David and Kit recognized as MAD artists and writers because they are the present and future of the magazine.

The show takes place Saturday, November 15th at the Doubletree Hotel, Dallas Market Center, 9:30 am-5 pm. Admission is only $7.00! I’ll be drawing caricatures and commissions, have plenty of copies of my prints available, some MAD originals, and copies of my book for sale. I’ve you are in Dallas next weekend, stop on by!