Tom's Mad Blog
October 6th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Hi Tom, please don’t get me wrong. We love your work but doesn’t it get a bit mechanical/ boring/ task like to do same kind of work day in and day out? I know you have chosen your favorite field of profession but since most of the work is almost same style/type do you ever give a thought about say becoming a painter/ artist as in painting exhibition? Does it ever crosses your mind that you (illustrators) have to deal in volumes to make a good living while say an abstract/contemporary art painter puts in less than half the time earns a lot more,… READ MORE
October 4th, 2013 | Posted in General
I had a few people email me about that “Gladiator” parody I did for Cracked waaaay back in 2000 to see if I had any more of it. Well, I do. Quite a bit in fact. There is a sad and interesting story behind that job. My artwork appeared in exactly four issues of Cracked, all published in late 1999/early 2000. The first two parodies I did I actually wrote myself, with some help on the second one by my pal Jim Batts. “God-Hilla”, a parody of the Mathew Broderick “Godzilla” film, appeared in Cracked #344. I wrote and drew that one as a sample… READ MORE
October 4th, 2013 | Posted in News
I’m making a rare appearance at one of the Midwest Comic Book Association’s twice-a-year comic cons here in Minnesota (I know… BIG DEAL). I feel a little guilty as I’m missing my NCS Chapter’s annual get together this weekend because I A. Just got back late last night from abroad and can’t possibly go anywhere father than 10 miles from my house this weekend (The meeting is in Sioux Falls). B. I have a wedding reception to go to Saturday night. C. I am off to Florida for a week next week and have 3 weeks of work to squeeze into the week as it… READ MORE
October 3rd, 2013 | Posted in General
… jiggity jig. Back home from Italia in just a few hours. Great trip, now back to work! READ MORE
October 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Clicky to Embiggen… This obviously isn’t a sketch but as I am still over in Italy this will have to do. I posted this about seven years ago so many I am sure have never seen it, and given the subject matter and my current location (in fact I visited the Colosseum yesterday) I thought it was appropriate. This is some art from the fourth and last parody I did for Cracked magazine… back when Cracked was an actual comic publication with actual cartooning rather than a website with almost endless “top ten” lists and literally endless ads. The work I did on this parody… READ MORE
October 1st, 2013 | Posted in General
Here we go again! That’s a Sebastian Kr?¬?ger Marilyn and Stallone I saw no caricaturists at all in the small towns in Tuscany I have vistied that last few days… so sorry about the delay in more observations. That said, here we go with another ridiculous caricature report from Italy, this time from the city of Rome! I found a huge group of artists gathered in Piazza Navona, which is where the famous Bernini designed “Fountain of the Four Rivers” is located. That’s Joe Bluhm’s Tom Cruise… I think that’s a Court Jone’s Einstein. Several repeat samples on another artist’s cart??? Kr?¬?ger’s Michael Jackson… In… READ MORE
September 30th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Occasionally this feature will have some info on what’s new at MAD… like this week! MAD keeps slowly entering the digital age with their iPad app by adding more and more of their classic issues for purchase and download. Last week they announced all the issues from 1969 were now available digitally. I’m not sure how they choose which years to add in… maybe they have a bunch of homeless guys from Times Square turning in the stuff they find in the alleyways in exchange for liquor and just going with what they get. Anyway, you can now get the following back issues on the… READ MORE
September 29th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve read your articles on the evil of doing work-for-hire art. Isn’t MAD work-for-hire? Why the double standard? A: It’s true, I have railed about the inadvisability of work-for-hire agreements, which are agreements between the artist and the client wherein the client owns not only the copyrights to the work, but all the originals and every scrap of every concept or idea you did for that project, forever. Usually this is not a very good deal for the artist, because that work can become a cash cow for the client with no further payment to the artist necessary. That said, there are some exceptions… READ MORE
