Tom's Mad Blog
May 20th, 2014 | Posted in News
The Lovely Anna and I are off to smoldering sunny San Diego for the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award Weekend early tomorrow. As the current President of the NCS, I’ve organized, planned and will run the whole weekend. Well, actually The Lovely Anna does all that but I will help with the centerpieces for the banquet. There will be copious live coverage here on Tom’s MAD Blog as well as the NCS site, included “red carpet” pics and interviews and other fun stuff. Just a few fun facts and other info before we head out: Yes, I know who will be the winner of the… READ MORE
May 19th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s MADness is from MAD #405’s parody of the Oscar-winning movie “Traffic” entitled “Traff-eccch!” written by Arnie Kogen. This was my very first movie parody for MAD, and the splash page was made up of a series of spot illustrations superimposed over maps of the United States and Mexico. The weird yellow and blue casts to some of the spots were to mimic the color palette of the film, which changed depending on the location of the scene… Mexico was yellow, Washington DC was blue and other scenes were normal color. Back in the early days I did the pages as a series of… READ MORE
May 18th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I know you have a full schedule at the drawing board and a family to manage and cherish, but if you had a full day to use to just fill the well, gather inspiration for your art, how would you spend it? A: I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy that the best way to recharge your creative batteries is to do nothing creative at all for a while. My ideal day off is to go nowhere near my studio and completely disconnect from the drawing board. In fact, the less I can even think about work the better. Total escapism by going to the… READ MORE
May 16th, 2014 | Posted in General
I was honored to be the guest this morning on “Friday Hangouts with Carlos and Bob”, a Google hangout program with Carlos Castellanos (Baldo, Drawn by Success) and Bob Ostrom (Bob Ostrom Art, Bob Teaches Art). Here’s some links to the interview on Drawn by Success and YouTube. You can find it on Google+ as well. Here’s the YouTube version: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jaj-ZQbNRA[/youtube] READ MORE
May 15th, 2014 | Posted in News
Clicky to Embiggen… Last week the New York Post quietly dropped their entire daily comics section, which admittedly was only 7 or 8 comic strips, with no explanation or warning. As the current president of the National Cartoonists Society, I wrote a letter to the Post admonishing them for the action…which according to some reports was a cost-cutting move. Daryl Cagle and the Cagle Cartoons Syndicate asked me to turn my letter into a guest column, which they now have available on their website. Daryl also suggested I do a cartoon to accompany the column. Below is my article. Above is the first editorial cartoon… READ MORE
May 14th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Continuing our “Game of Thrones” run, here’s a quick study of Rory McCann as Sandor “The Hound” Clegane. READ MORE
May 13th, 2014 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The annual “MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things” lists have been a popular feature since it’s debut in 1998, so naturally MAD decided to try and cash in by collecting the 100 dumbest ones of the century (so far) into one special collector’s edition! I haven’t seen a copy yet but I assume a few of the ones I’ve done over the last 14 years are included… since all mine were the very definition of “dumb”. READ MORE
May 13th, 2014 | Posted in News
Here’s the thing… shouldn’t it actually be spring in order for “SpingCon” to be held here in Minnesota. We are still waiting for %$%#^ spring to arrive around here, but I guess SpringCon goes on regardless. I’ll be at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds grandstand this weekend doing caricature drarwings, selling books, pimping prints and hawking overpriced original MAD artwork. Come by and say hello! READ MORE
