Tom's Mad Blog
July 23rd, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
We’re starting a new series for the “Sketch o’the Week”… classic comedians! We have a pretty good start already with our recent Monty Python run, and there will certainly be no shortage of fodder. This week we are going to go with The Lovely Anna‘s suggestion of one of the greatest of all female comics… Lily Tomlin! Ms. Tomlin has had a career that has spanned over 50 years, and she’s done significant things in all of those decades. She started out doing stand up and off-Broadway performing in the 60’s, became a household name in early 70’s on TV in “Martin and Rowan’s Laugh In”, and… READ MORE
July 21st, 2025 | Posted in General
Come see me at San Diego Comic Con this weekend at a NEW location: Exhibitor Table I-07! READ MORE
July 16th, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Superman Spoiler-Free Review: The short version is, I loved it. IMO it’s by far the best treatment of Superman in film since the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner movies. Gunn really understands the Superman character, everyone was perfectly cast and did a fantastic job in their respective roles, and it was a fun ride to boot. I’m one of those people who can appreciate different takes on a character like a comic book superhero, even if they don’t match my idea of that character. That’s why I can enjoy the sixties “Batman” TV show and Christopher Nolan‘s “Dark Knight” trilogy in equal measure. The former is a… READ MORE
July 9th, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’ve run out of Pythons! Back to more random subjects, and this week I am generating absolutely no Good Vibrations at all with this sketch of a young Brian Wilson of “The Beach Boys” fame. Wilson of course, just recently passed away, leaving a truly enviable legacy in the world of popular music. READ MORE
July 7th, 2025 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here we go with yet another entry in our intrepid and insipid diary of the work I did for MAD magazine. In this episode we look back at a two page Al Jaffee homage done for MAD #14, August 2020 called “Cheat Your Way to Olympic Gold!” written by Desmond Devlin, plus a bonus piece of art I did for the issue. Here’s page two: MAD #14 was a tribute for Al Jaffee, who officially retired with the appearance of his final original Fold-In in the issue. Actually Al really stopped doing the Fold-Ins with the one that appeared in MAD #6 (April 2019), since… READ MORE
July 3rd, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Here’s the last of our “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” series, the lone American of the troupe Terry Gilliam! Gilliam was born right here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so we get to claim him as “one of us”, although he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 12 in 1952. You don’t survive twelve winters in Minnesota without it being frozen into your DNA. There is a huge MAD Magazine connection with Gilliam and his eventual work with Monty Python. Gilliam started out as an animator and strip cartoonist, and was heavily influenced by the early Harvey Kurtzman MADmagazines. Gilliam would eventually work with… READ MORE
June 30th, 2025 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here we go with another of the stumbling steps on the path that was my work for MAD Magazine. This week is another oddball sort of assignment that, frankly, I still have no idea what the joke was really supposed to be. It was written by Grant Reed, and appeared in MAD #13, June 2020. I guess it’s supposed to be a spoof of an ad for the “Trinity Broadcasting Network”, which is a large religious TV network, incorporating Kanye West‘s self-deified new name “Yeezus” and comparing the huckstering ways of the Kardashians and the church network, which solicits donations on its web site in… READ MORE
June 25th, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
THE BISHOP!! And now for something not so completely different… another in our series of sketches of the members of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus!” This week’s subject is the late, great Terry Jones. Terry was kind of an under appreciated member of the troupe in my opinion, at least in the sense that he wasn’t as much of a household name as John Cleese, Eric Idle, or Michael Palin. He did a lot more of his work behind the camera as a writer and director. He was instrumental in creating the structure of the “Flying Circus” TV show, where sketches would transition into one another… READ MORE
