August 11th, 2014 | Posted in General
In comic book shops, on the iPad and in subscribers mailboxes now, on news stands everywhere tomorrow: Cover (Mark Fredrickson) The Fundalini Pages (Rick Tulka, Jeff Kruse, Kevin Pope, J.C. Duffy, Matt Lassen, Jason Mustian, Chris Houghton, Peter Bagge, Megan O’Leary, Sam Sisco, Bob Eckstein, Mike Morse, Paul Coker, Kenny Keil, Dick DeBartolo, Tom Bunk, Garth Gerhart, P.C. Vey) Perfect Bacon Bed– A MAD Ad Parody (Artist: Scott Bricher) Snark Tank (Dick DeBartolo, Tom Richmond) Your Parents Say to You…/One Day You Will Say to Them… (Matt Lassen, Tim Hamilton) Spy vs. Spy (Peter Kuper) Questions We’d Like to Ask Justin Bieber (Matt Lassen, Hermann… READ MORE
August 10th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How do you approach copyright on fonts when it comes to your different projects? It’s tempting to just use whatever font looks best but quite a bit of them have copyright restrictions on commercial use. Or they are donate to author. I am guessing you hand letter some but curious how you approach font usage in your artwork when it comes to copyright restrictions. A: I have to admit I am very lax when it come to the use of a font in an illustration I am doing. Often I hand letter something, but I will usually base that on a font I have… READ MORE
August 8th, 2014 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Well, I’m not actually at the drawing board right now, unless you count all the caricatures I am doing of the men and women in our armed forces serving in undisclosed locations in the Persian Gulf this week. But, here’s what is awaiting me when I get back to the studio next week: MAD TV parody– For once I can tell you exactly what I am working on for MAD, since editor John Ficarra spilled the beans in an interview at Comic-Con last week… it’s “Orange is the New Black”. This, I believe, will be MAD’s first parody of an Internet-only TV show. History, baby.… READ MORE
August 7th, 2014 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
“The Drawing Muscle” This isn’t much of a story but it is something I used to freak my fellow caricaturists out with all the time. The technique I learned to draw live caricatures invoked using a lead holder and a 4B or 6B 3mm graphite lead. Many live caricaturists use a marker for their lines, which is wonderful and can be used to great effect. I learned with graphite, and the principal reason for this was we used an airbrush to add the color. With the airbrush it was better to use graphite as it was not as intensely black as the lines from a… READ MORE
August 6th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s a cop-out on SotW due to my being way, way, WAAAAYYYY out of town. This is the pencil sketch for my latest Marlin Co. poster, a Halloween theme as you perceive. READ MORE
August 5th, 2014 | Posted in General
According to editor John Ficarra in this article… forever. He cites that while circulation on newsstands has fluctuated and dropped over the years, the subscriber base of 100,o00 stays almost perfectly constant. So how long can Mad maintain its current state? Forever, Ficarra insists. He’s quick to point out that although newsstand sales are down, the number of Mad subscribers … roughly 100,000 … has held steady for pretty much its entire life. For generations of kids, he’s seen a pattern in the subscribers: They pick it up around the age of 12, drop it at age 16, then subscribe again out of nostalgia in… READ MORE
August 5th, 2014 | Posted in News
I’m currently enroute to an undisclosed U.S. Military location where the weather is bound to be hot and sandy with a chance of camels. I’ve got a few blog posts queued up but things might be a little spotty on Tom’s MAD Blog this week. Don’t worry about my safety on this trip, though… if things get hairy I can always pick up Rick Kirkman and throw him at the enemy while the rest of us run. READ MORE
August 4th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
Yes, that’s late MAD publisher Bill Gaines on a moped speeding along the streets of… somewhere. It’s one of several pictures posted on a recent update on the progress of the “When We Went MAD!” documentary that was successfully funded on Kickstarter back in February. Check out the update and lots of other great pictures of the Usual Gang of Idiots on the update posted on their Kickstarter page. …that reminds me, I have to get the art done for the movie poster!!! READ MORE
