Tom's Mad Blog
March 7th, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s ’66 Batvillian is Roddy McDowall as “Bookworm”, original available in the Studio Store as usual. BatFacts: Many TV Trivia and information books incorrectly state that actress Joan Crawford played “the Printer’s Devil”, an assistant to Roddy McDowall‘s Bookworm, in the first season episode. This error occurred when one book accidentally misspelled actor John Crawford‘s name. Many subsequent books then used this one erroneous book as a reference without bothering to check the accuracy of the listing. Joan Crawford never appeared on “Batman”, that role was played by John Crawford. READ MORE
March 6th, 2018 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The other day I was talking to someone about MAD‘s history and had to correct them about something that is a persistent inaccuracy about why MAD went from a comic book to a magazine: the mistaken belief that the 1954 congressional hearings on comic books and “juvenile delinquency” had anything to do with it. For some reason people think that Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Gaines changed MAD from a comic book to a magazine in order to avoid having to adhere to the then newly formed Comics Code Authority, a self-censoring body the comic book industry created to avoid the government censorship that was on… READ MORE
March 5th, 2018 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I often get asked what my favorite job for MAD has been, and while the standard answer is “the last one”, this one I did of the TV show “Breaking Bad” for MAD #516 (Aug 2012) and written by Desmond Devlin is right up there. Here are the pencil roughs for that job, plus all the final art. For some reason I did “full art” on this one and did not ink in the word boxes like I usually do. I honestly cannot remember why I decided to do that, but there it is. READ MORE
March 4th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve been tasked with creating a multiple page “comic” featuring a client, her family and pets. The project is a secret and it’s been difficult to acquire references of some of the subjects to draw in various poses and at various angles. I ended up gathering a lot of reference from their Instagram, printing it out, and also printing a mirror image. I think I’ll get by, but how do you approach clients about likeness references when bidding a job? A: I’m just very up front about the fact that how well the caricatures turn out is very much determined by how good the… READ MORE
March 2nd, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Our 60’s Bat-villains series continues with Vincent Price as “Egghead”! Original available in the Studio Store. BatFacts: When filming this episode there was to be a big “egg fight” in the finale, and Vincent Price was required to hit Burt Ward (Robin) with an egg. According to Price: “The crew was fed up with Burt, so they had me throw two dozen eggs at him, and he had to stand there and take it.” READ MORE
March 1st, 2018 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Bill would have been 96 today. I never met him, he passed away 18 years before my first piece appeared in his magazine. READ MORE
March 1st, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Sketch week continues with Victor Buono aka “King Tut” from the 60’s Batman TV show. Original available in the Studio Store. Bat Facts: The Batman cover issue of TV Guide announced that Robert Morely was scheduled to play King Tut, which turned out to be completely unfounded. READ MORE
February 28th, 2018 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This makes sense considering I was asked to do traditional comic book style word balloons and have a more “comic book” feel in my latest MAD parody work. It was also an early rumor they were going back to the original comic book format.. READ MORE
