Tom's Mad Blog
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
June 25th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
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June 24th, 2014 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Clicky any to embiggen… I have a couple of big projects on the board right now that is keeping me from accepting a lot of little jobs. There are pros and cons to that, but mostly pros. Here’s what’s on the board right now: MAD Magazine– 5 page TV show parody Book Illustrations– Working with an author on a “pitch” for what looks like a really fun book Comic book project– Sort of a half graphic novel I am now way behind on. Marlin Co Poster– My usual monthly assignment. Above is the final of a recent one I did for them. Pencils and ink… READ MORE
June 23rd, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at the complete pencil roughs for MAD‘s parody of the TV show LOST, from MAD #453, May 2005, written by Dick Debartolo (Clicky any to embiggen): And if you are curious, here’s what the final art looked like: READ MORE
June 22nd, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Hey Tom! Looking back in your blog, I’ve noticed that occasionally you either re-do a sketch of a celebrity, or even state difficulty with a subject (Nathan Fillion I believe to be one of the more “challenging” subjects) But have you ever had a severe level of uncertainty with a subject? Any subjects that you couldn’t just get right no matter what?¬¨‚Ć Any more challenging subjects you would care to share about and how you overcame that? I can’t imagine you’d let an uncertain caricature be published to MAD… well maybe who knows? A: Every caricaturist occasionally struggles with some faces. It could be… READ MORE
June 21st, 2014 | Posted in News
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere is a podcast about the greater world of Sherlock Holmes, including his influence in any and all media. I guess they must have been running out of interesting guests, because they asked me to be on the latest episode which just got posted today. I guess they liked me, because we did the interview twice. Well, actually we did it a second time because the first one got lost in a hard drive meltdown. My Sherlock Holmes connection is mostly about my being a pseudo Sherlockian (real Sherlockians have to earn the title) and having done art for a Sherlock… READ MORE
June 20th, 2014 | Posted in Freelancing
This was a recent column of mine in a recent edition of the National Cartoonists Society publication “The Cartoon!st”: One of the things I love the most about the NCS is that our members cover the gamut of all facets of professional cartooning. Syndicated comics, comic books, animation, web comics, book illustration, gag cartoons, greeting cards… you name it and some of our members do it. I find it fascinating to hear and learn about the trials and tribulations of the different ways people make a living in this industry. I do mostly freelance illustration, which is an exercise in feast, famine, panic, and anxiety.… READ MORE
