Tom's Mad Blog
February 16th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
MAD Magazine fandom lost a really fantastic source of joy and MAD scholars lost a really fantastic resource this past weekend when the MAD Cover Site shut its digital doors forever. All that’s left of its seemingly endless MAD data is a placeholder. The MAD Cover Site was the individual effort of one person, MAD Superfan Doug Gilford. Doug started it on Aug 17th, 1997 as part of the late Dick Hanchette‘s Collectmad.com website. It began as a collection of scans of the all the covers of MAD through the years, along with a list of each issues highlights (or lowlights depending on your perspective).… READ MORE
February 15th, 2015 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I there any part of a project you DON’T like to draw? In other words do you find it anathema to draw anything mechanical or architectural or anything otherwise mundane. — such as animals or cars or trees, etc.? Similarly, do you have concerns when drawing perspectives, foreshortening, etc.? A: Not really. Drawing mechanical things like buildings or cars is a little different from drawing organic things like plants or people only because the latter requires more rigid order with the forms and the former is more fluid and…uh… “organic” is really the only adjective that applies. Both are just things that are are… READ MORE
February 13th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I guess “Weird Al” Yankovic is moonlighting in the publication biz these days. Al tweeted recently that he will be the first ever “guest” editor for MAD Magazine in issue #533, due out in April. The official MAD Press release: “The Usual Gang of Idiots” are getting a new Idiot-in-Chief! Celebrated musical satirist and comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic, the biggest-selling comedy recording artist in history, will helm the next issue of MAD as the legendary humor magazine’s first-ever guest editor. Winner of the 2015 Grammy¬¨?Ü for Best Comedy Album, Weird Al is the writer of some of the biggest song parodies in history. Speaking from… READ MORE
February 12th, 2015 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Hoo boy. Here’s some humbling stuff that I thought was lost to all eternity until I discovered an archive of my website from 1997. The images aren’t too sharp but here are a bunch of old theme park caricature examples of mine from the early to mid 90’s, awkward lumpy bodies, broken-looking hands and all. There were meant to be examples of the live graphite and airbrush style we used. Hard to believe a few of these are nearly 25 years old: READ MORE
February 10th, 2015 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s SotW is another in my little run of “The Walking Sketches”, this time of fan favorite Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier. I did something a little different this week and did this with a couple of different sized Micron pens. READ MORE
February 10th, 2015 | Posted in General
I’ve got two bits of Comic Con related news: Looks like I will be attending the Toronto Comic Con on behalf of the National Cartoonists Society, as we will be having a booth there this year. That will be taking place March 20-22nd, and you can come by and meet all sorts of NCS cartoonists from the Great White North including “Between Friends” creator Sandra Bell Lundy! I’ll have stuff along like prints, books and original art, plus I’ll be doing sketches. I also recently got the news I will have my own booth at San Diego Comic-Con this year. I’ll be in booth H-4,… READ MORE
February 9th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at MAD‘s parody of “30 Rock”, written by Arnie Kogen with art by me. From MAD #490, June 2008 (clicky any to embiggen): Pencil roughs Final splash page So, what’s with the odd looking monkey I added in the lower center of the splash on the final? Well, the issue before was the “All Monkey Issue”, and I did the art on a piece showing the MAD staff as monkeys: After the issue came out, the folks at MAD decided they should have added former art director Nadina Simon in that group. So they asked me to draw… READ MORE
February 8th, 2015 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you work with assistants and if not, why ? A: For those who might not know this, some cartoonists have assistants that do certain tasks for them in order to get work done more quickly and, thus, be able to accept more work. These tasks can range from minor stuff like erasing the pencil lines from inked boards to major stuff like literally doing all the work (called “ghosting”). In most cases these assistants get paid but get no credit on the final work. This practice has been around since comics began, and in fact was very common in the early days of… READ MORE
