Tom's Mad Blog
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
September 27th, 2013 | Posted in News
“D’Oh!” Labels added by me (digitally) As The Lovely Anna and I travel through Italy, I have noticed an odd phenomenon that I have been wondering about… almost every walk up shop that sells alcohol carries “Duff” Beer, the fictional beer of choice of Homer Simpson from the long-running animated TV series ‘The Simpsons”. That got me wondering… do Europeans think that Americans actually LIKE Duff Beer, which as far as I knew in real life was nothing more than a gag label beer in the U.S.? Or, is ‘The Simpsons” popular enough in Europe marketing-wise that Europeans will actually buy this beer despite it… READ MORE
September 26th, 2013 | Posted in General
I had much better luck in Florence than Venice finding caricaturists. We found a square with almost all portrait and caricaturists right in front of the Uffizi Gallery, and several more around the Piazza del Duomo. It takes a special kind of guts (or stupid) to sell your artwork only feet away from some of the greatest works of art ever created, but street caricaturists are seldom accused of being timid. That Madonna is a Kr?¬?ger I’ve seen that Roberto Benigni somewhere… The Connery I believe is a Vizcarra… The same Benigni and the same Jackson… not sure where that one is from either. That… READ MORE
