Tom's Mad Blog
July 7th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
Alfred E. Neuman is one of the most recognized pop culture icons in the world. Go figure, but it’s true. MAD didn’t invent him, he’s actually been around since the 1800’s, appearing in ads for children’s dentistry and other products. Maria Reidelbach‘s book “Completely MAD: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine” has a whole chapter on the origin of Alfred, but the bottom line is that nobody really knows for certain when the grinning gap-toothed idiot really first appeared in pop culture. As the story goes, original MAD editor Harvey Kurtzman had seen images of the “What- Me Worry? kid” from old… READ MORE
July 6th, 2014 | Posted in General
Q: I’ve just come from noseying around your blog where I’ve been greatly enjoying your “The Game is Afoot!” Sherlock Holmes series. This sparked me off thinking: when creating something like this, is the subject matter primarily chosen by your own enthusiasm and tastes (I know you’re a big Holmes fan), or are you keeping one eye on what might be a popular seller when it comes to limited edition prints? Also, I was wondering whether you have all of your prints made in one go – or if you have a few smaller runs done periodically, to minimize the risk of being left out… READ MORE
July 3rd, 2014 | Posted in General
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July 1st, 2014 | Posted in News
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8X5pcywkaI[/youtube] In the last year or two I have been corresponding with a couple of terrific cartoonists from Europe named Jos?¬© Villena and David Tomaselli, who do a great and clever comic strip called Onion and Pea. They collected their work in a very cool, interactive ebook that I mentioned here before. Now Jos?¬© and David are putting together their first physical “Onion and Pea” book, and have launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund it. They are recently joined members of the NCS and attended their first Reubens this past May in San Diego where they shot a little video for their campaign…. you may… READ MORE
June 30th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a peek at a rough sketch for a “MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of 2005” piece entitled “The Terri Schiavo Media Circus” from MAD #461, January 2006. The original rough above got changed quite a bit by the editors for the final page seen below. This was a rare instance where I incorporated some realistic art in with a MAD piece… there was no other way to handle drawing Terri Schiavo, and if really drives home the pathetic, political maneuvering the media and the ancillary players in this tragedy were guilty of. I was sorry to lose the… READ MORE
June 29th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Love your book, it helps me a great deal when dealing with my studio works. Especially the ladies’ facial structure as I seem to have problems with (that)… issues with questions such as ” can you draw me slimmer?” , “can you draw me younger?” etc. How do you deal with such requests? A: Ah, the eternal bane of the live caricaturist… “Can’t you draw me skinny?” “Don’t draw my buck teeth!” “Don’t draw my wrinkles!”, etc. etc. Why people with low self image or vanity issues would want to get a caricature drawn is beyond me, but live caricaturists get these kinds of… READ MORE
June 27th, 2014 | Posted in General
Ended up planning a last second visit to my theme park operation in Massachusetts this weekend, and took the opportunity to swing through New York to attend the annual “Bunny Bash”. This is an unofficial NCS party hosted by the delightful Bunny Hoest Carpenter at her beautiful Long Island home. It’s a wonderful time and you see some pretty famous cartoonists there: Gerry Mooney and Bill Janocha chat with animator Bill Plympton A shot of the patio The Lovely Anna won an award for being an awesome NCS First Lady! Unfortunately she wasn’t there, she was back home doing all my NCS work for me!… READ MORE
June 26th, 2014 | Posted in News
The blog turns eight today, the first post having appeared on June 26th, 2006. Here’s my annual list of the website stats: Over 6.4 million page views Best day ever-¬¨‚Ć 22,199 views 2,931 total posts over 11,200 comments 388 Sunday Mailbag questions answered 393 Sketches o’the Week posted READ MORE
