Tom's Mad Blog
August 28th, 2017 | Posted in Monday MADness
Here’s a look at some of the character designs I did for a segment of the MAD animated show on Cartoon Network called “Extreme Renovation- House Edition: Superman” and a video of the finished animation: READ MORE
August 27th, 2017 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You are excellent at drawing, but for me your writing is excellent too. How did you learn to write? Some time ago I’ve read William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well”. You are always following his four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. A: Thanks for the compliment. I’ve always loved to write, but have had no formal training past what everyone got in high school. That makes my writing long on message and context but short on grammar, punctuation, and structure. What grasp of the language I have I credit to my mom for forcing my siblings and me to speak correct English.… READ MORE
August 24th, 2017 | Posted in General
Glenn in happier times, with the artwork he did of the MAD Magazine speakers at the ISCA Con in Ohio in 2009. L to R: Me, Mark Fredrickson, Glenn, Sam Viviano, Hermann Mejia On Jan 1, 2016 a long-time friend and fellow caricaturist, Glenn Ferguson, was brutally attacked and stabbed in the head by a co-worker named Fredrick Torres. He suffered permanent damage after 3 inches of a pair of scissors pierced and lodged in his brain. After 20 months of legal weaseling, Torres finally went on trial yesterday. Here’s a couple of new stories. Glenn struggles daily with PTSD, impairment due to brain damage… READ MORE
August 23rd, 2017 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Deadlines are still killing me this week, so here’s another throwback sketch out of an old sketchbook I ran across recently, probably from around 2011 or so… Ryan Reynolds. READ MORE
August 22nd, 2017 | Posted in News
Come see me this weekend at Wizard World Comic Con, Chicago (aka Chicago Comic Con)! I’ll be in Artist’s Alley at table A49, all by my lonesome as The Lovely Anna has got better things to do other stuff going on. I’ll have all my usual junk plus new this year are copies of “Goodnight Batcave”, a brand new comic-con exclusive mini-print, and of course will be doing commissions and caricatures. Come and order those early because without Anna I will be interrupted a lot when doing them and won’t be able to do as many as I usually do, so my commission’s list will… READ MORE
August 21st, 2017 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here’s a look at some character designs I did for episode 28 of the MAD animated show on Cartoon Network, a segment called “Captain America’s Got Talent”: Sadly the only video of it online is a dubbed and poor resolution Spanish version: READ MORE
August 20th, 2017 | Posted in General
Q: I did a caricature gig for the opening of a local restaurant. My first customer was a heavy woman in her ’50s, my first drawing of the night. She had such a roundish, potatoish face and I did my best but threw away the first one and didn’t do much better on the second. Question; when somebody has a face like that do you define the features with cheekbones you don’t see and muscle tone that isn’t there? Second question; early in your career did you ever run into a similar circumstance where you couldn’t nail the face and were stumped or did you… READ MORE
August 18th, 2017 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Number One Son Thomas studied overseas this spring/summer is a little town names Eichstätt In Germany, about 1.5 hours northwest of Munich. The Lovely Anna and I went to visit him (I also taught a workshop in Munich while there). Germany is one of the few countries who still produces their own version of MAD, where they license the magazine and reprint a certain amount of the US material while also doing their own content, covers, etc. One of my missions was to find a copy of a German MAD while there. I failed miserably. Granted I didn’t go looking for comic book shops or… READ MORE