Tom's Mad Blog
January 31st, 2014 | Posted in General
Anyone who is a fan of Batman (the comic book Batman that is, as opposed to just a fan of the movie or TV versions) or the history of comics knows who Bill Finger is. Sadly, the rest of the world doesn’t. What the rest of the world sees when they watch a Batman movie or TV show or pick up a Batman comic book is the ubiquitous credit that appears on anything featuring the character: “Batman created by Bob Kane“. That leads them to believe Batman was actually created by Bob Kane. Kane was a mediocre artist at best but a very shrewd businessman.… READ MORE
January 30th, 2014 | Posted in News
.. after congressional session. Caricaturists everywhere weep. READ MORE
January 30th, 2014 | Posted in General
I did a rare live gig last weekend for an event called “Twinsfest” in Minneapolis. It takes place in the dead of winter and features current and former players and coaches of the Minnesota Twins meeting and greeting fans, the selling of stuff and especially of ball park food and beverages, all at the (relatively) new Twins ballpark Target Field. No, it doesn’t happen on the field… that’s under about 3 feet of snow right now. Fortunately there are plenty of interior areas of the ballpark usually reserved for club members and corporate VIPs that were opened up to attendees. The event raises money for… READ MORE
January 29th, 2014 | Posted in General
It would look like this… Clicky to embiggen… READ MORE
January 29th, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
The BBC just released the first image of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor, complete with his costume, so I could not resist doing a drawing of him as the official Doctor. I will NOT be issuing another limited edition print with Capaldi added, because that would just not be right. I am happy that the drawing I was doing of him as the “12th Doctor option” on the current print was not too far from his actual look in the show: For the few remaining ones of these I do, I will get the specifics of the costume more accurate. BTW, I have less… READ MORE
January 28th, 2014 | Posted in News
Sketch by Morrie Turner for The Lovely Anna from 2003… nobody ever sketches for me, but Anna gets them all the time. I was sad to hear of the passing of a giant in the cartooning world this past weekend- Morris “Morrie” Turner, the creator of the syndicated comic strip “Wee Pals” and one of the real pioneers and heroes of cartooning. I got a call from mutual friend Scott Nichol out in California with the news on Sunday night. Morrie doing the Lovely Anna’s sketch at a picnic in Santa Rosa in 2003. Sad to say I wasn’t very familiar with Morrie’s work until… READ MORE
January 27th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
For this week’s Monday MADness I actually discovered something I didn’t even know I had… full sized scans of the final pencils for a complete movie parody… this one being “Spider-Sham Too” from MAD #446, October 2004. Several people have asked me how rough my “roughs” really are compared to my final pencils. Usually I scan in the pencil roughs that I do at print size on the actual layout pages for MAD to review, and don’t bother scanning in the final pencils before inking, so I can’t show them as examples. I am not sure why I did it this way for this parody,… READ MORE
January 26th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve seen you address the question of ape-ing the style of another artist previously, but I wanted to ask it from a different angle: at what point did you begin to shape your own style of art? It’s my opinion that there is no shame in being influenced by superior and more famous artists when you are finding your own lines. In fact, it’s probably silly to assume that it’s even possible to not mock someone (even if it’s your elementary school art teacher) when you’re first introduced to a given medium. But what measures did you take to draw features YOUR way, when… READ MORE
