Tom's Mad Blog
January 27th, 2015 | Posted in News
Clockwise from far left: Nick Galifianakis, Mort Drucker, Brian Crane, Doug Mahnke, Mark Anderson, Jeff Keane, Ann Telnaes and Juana Medina- (Clicky to Embiggen) Members of the National Cartoonists Society will be receiving the official brochure for the 2015 Reuben Award Weekend in their mailboxes in the next week or so. My cover art above. With it goes the announcements of the speaker lineup and special award winners: Mort Drucker– First recipient of the “NCS Medal of Honor”; Speaker Jeff Keane– Recipient of the NCS “Silver T-Square” for outstanding dedication to the Society Brian Crane– Reuben winning creator of the syndicated comic strip “Pickles”; speaker… READ MORE
January 27th, 2015 | Posted in News
As I speak… uh… type, my book The Mad Art of Caricature is running its sixth printing since its release in November of 2011. Copies will be arriving here sometime in early March, depending on the shipping strikes on the west coast. The book will definitely sell out both with me and Amazon before the new printing arrives. Your mileage with bookstore stock may vary. I am truly floored by the staying power of this book. I figured I’d sell a ton of them to caricaturists right away and then see it trickle into obscurity with continued but small sales levels for years after. Instead,… READ MORE
January 26th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at my very first parody for MAD, “Malcontent in the Muddle” written by Desmond Devlin from MAD #403, March 2001. The color digital files from this piece is lost to posterity thanks to a lost CD-ROM and a computer crash in the late 2000’s that corrupted the original files. However, a UK based “Malcolm in the Middle” fan site has high resolution scans of the entire parody online, so here’s a look at those pages (clicky any to embiggen): I was told that Frankie Muniz did not like his caricatures in this piece. Just hearsay, though. Many thanks… READ MORE
January 24th, 2015 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you use your drawing skills for private tasks, say for instance a birthday-card for your uncle? And are you asked by relatives, friends or neighbors to make just a little drawing for a party, a present, etc.of course without getting payed? A: That sort of thing is inevitable, but I have to say my family, friends and neighbors are all very good about understanding I have a hard time finding enough hours in the day to get my professional work done, so they seldom if ever ask me to do anything for them. I’ve done art for a few things like that here… READ MORE
January 23rd, 2015 | Posted in News
The Lovely Anna at NYCC, ready to help you! I tried a bit of an experiment in 2014… doing a lot of comic book conventions. This is something I hadn’t ever done in the past because, well, MAD is sort of the red-headed stepchild of that kind of crowd. Yes, everyone’s heard of it and the magazine has a core group of devoted fans, but it isn’t the sort of thing that gets people to stand in line unless your name is Drucker, Jaffee, Aragonés or others of legendary stature. Still, in the last few years I did start to have something I did not… READ MORE
January 22nd, 2015 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Today’s edition of “Illustration Throwback Thursday” features a book I illustrated for MAD back in 2009 called Bo Confidential: The Secret Files of America’s First Dog, which just so happens to be on sale via the MAD iPad app for only 99 cents (cheap) this week only! The story behind this book is a short but intense one. I got a call from my friend, mentor and a guy who owes me $10.00, MAD art director Sam Viviano at the very end of April, 2009 to say they had a book project they wanted me to do the art for. The working title was “Bo… READ MORE
January 21st, 2015 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch… no doubt soon to be sold as t-shirts in several Etsy stores… is of Oscar winning actress Tilda Swinton. READ MORE
January 20th, 2015 | Posted in General
… one at a time. Dear Lettie, No doubt you are well aware of this, but several of the items you have for sale in your Etsy store use caricatures of mine, taken from my website and colorized/manipulated into T-shirt designs. You do not have permission to use my work and are in direct violation of my copyright. Here are links to the offending items: Matt Smith, Tom Baker, Daniel Craig, Taylor Lautner, Taylor Lautner (again), Tom Baker (again) This is a courtesy letter to give you a chance to remove these items from your store. If they are still active by tomorrow morning at… READ MORE
