Tom's Mad Blog
June 10th, 2014 | Posted in General
I’ve been invited to be a special guest at the Grand Rapids Comic-Con this fall. The event is taking place November 21-23rd at the Deltaplex on 2500 Turner Ave. NW in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Lovely Anna will be my booth babe, and I’ll be hawking my prints, original pages of MAD art, books, and doing sketches and caricatures all weekend. I’ll also be doing a presentation at some point during the con, and it will be a combination caricature drawing lesson and how caricature and MAD Magazine fit together… so not my usual boring talk about my work. Should be fun! Hope to see… READ MORE
June 9th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
As promised, here’s the first of seven times I ended up having two different pieces in the same issue of MAD: MAD #463, March 2006: I did the art for the TV parody of “Everyone Hates Chris” written by Arnie Kogen. Here’s the pencil roughs and the final splash page art: Clicky any to embiggen… ¬¨‚Ć I also did the art for a Russ Cooper written feature called “MAD presents iToons” which were gags riffing on the at-the-time Apple ad campaign featuring silhouettes of people dancing around with white iPod earbuds in: READ MORE
June 8th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: A few issues ago you had two different pieces in the same issue of MAD. Has that ever happened before? A: The issue Richard is referring to is MAD #525, which included both the Arnie Kogen scribed parody of “The Following” I did the art for, and the “Abysmal House” piece (written by Jay Rath) I drew for the “MAD 20”. Having more than one piece is the same issue is a rare thing for me… for any illustrator really other than Sergio. More often than not these days I am doing “continuity” features for the magazine (i.e. the movie and TV parodies), and… READ MORE
June 6th, 2014 | Posted in General
The Lovely Anna pointed out on Facebook the other day that 21 years ago our oldest daughter, The Animated Elizabeth, started an early special education program through our local public school district. Since that day we’ve gone through over two decades of shivering at the school bus stop, choir concerts, plays, musicals, awards ceremonies, lock-ins, class trips, and the graduations of Elizabeth (sort of), and daughters The Dramatic Victoria and The Effervescent Gabrielle. That all ends tomorrow when our youngest, Number One Son Thomas, graduates from Eastview High School with honors. He’s off this fall to St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, to study computer… READ MORE
June 5th, 2014 | Posted in News
This Saturday a real gem of a gallery show of original comic art opens at the Kenosha Public Museum in Kenosha, WI… and when I say a “gem” I really mean it. The show is an extension of the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning, an annual weekend featuring guest cartoonists doing panels, presentation, workshops and meet and greets organized by Anne Hambrock. Anne’s husband John is a cartoonist who does the syndicated daily strip “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee”, and the Hambrocks live in the picturesque little town of Kenosha on the shores of Lake Michigan. This is why this small Wisconsin town hosts some… READ MORE
June 4th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Clicky to embiggen… Better late than never today… and we continue our series of caricatures¬¨‚Ćfrom “Game of Thrones”. This week our subject is Kit Harington aka Jon Snow. I met Mr. Harington in person last year at the Warner Bros./DC Comics party at Comic-Con. You would not believe how tiny he is. The internet claims he is 5’8″ but I think that would be accurate only if he was standing on a box. Maybe weighed 140 soaking wet. If it wasn’t for Peter Dinklage Harington would be the shortest guy on the set. That’s neither here or there, but it is funny how easy it… READ MORE
June 3rd, 2014 | Posted in General
Forgive me as I digress a little about working out. Back to art on Wednesday. Last week while wasting time on Facebook I ran across a link to this post about the evils of cross-fit training. In the article, the author derides cross-fit training as being unsafe, unhealthy, leaving you wide open to injury, and being in general a very bad idea. The Facebook post was followed by a lot of people agreeing and saying things like “why would I want to fail everyday?”, “I ripped my arm out of the socket doing cross-fit!”, and the ever popular “cross-fit sucks!!!”. For those of you who… READ MORE
June 2nd, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
After the release this weekend of Angelina Jolie‘s new movie “Malificent”, I thought for this week’s Monday MADnessI’d post a look at the art from another film where she had to wear prosthetics… but not horns. Here’s “Lotta Crotch: Bazoom Raider” from MAD #410, October 2001, written by Desmond Devlin. Clicky any to embiggen… READ MORE
