Tom's Mad Blog
December 11th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Knowing that you’re a huge Batman fan, which version of Batman (TV or movie) do you feel came closest to living up to the character and who would be your favorite villain? Also, I know you’ve had some of your work animated, but did animation itself ever appeal to you as a career? A: Please forgive the self-indulgence of answering a more personal opinion question here. Let’s take the second one first, as it’s the more pertinent professional query. I never considered animation as a career because I don’t have the patience for it. I might have been able to do character design given… READ MORE
December 9th, 2011 | Posted in News
When I joined the National Cartoonists Society in 1999, I got the chance to meet many of my cartooning heroes at the Reuben Awards weekends held in May each year. It was thrilling to get to meet legends like Jack Davis, Charles Schulz, Mort Drucker, Jeff MacNelly, Mike Peters… the list goes on and on. I’m not easily starstruck, but a few of those artists I was genuinely tongue-tied when I met them. Jerry Robinson might be the one I was most awed to meet, and that is saying something. Anybody who knows me knows I am a huge Batman fan… as I type this… READ MORE
December 8th, 2011 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Clicky to Embiggen Usually MAD wants me to wait until the latest issue is on the stands before sharing any of the work I did in it here on The MAD Blog. Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag on this one, so I might as well share it here. MAD has provided Comic Book Resources with an exclusive first look at the piece I illustrated for this year’s “MAD‘s 20 Dumbest People, Events & Things” feature in #513. Written by Kit Lively and Scott Nickel. Image courtesy of CBR and MAD Magazine. Here’s the pencil rough and the finished art sans the… READ MORE
December 8th, 2011 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
December is often one of the slower months for illustration work. It might just seem that way because I am usually slammed in October and November with projects for the “Year End” issues of publications… or maybe it’s because many magazines work on a yearly budget and by December they are tapped out for illustration money. I suspect the latter is one of the big reasons. Not that I have nothing going. Here is what is on the rather light drawing board at the moment: MAD Parody– This one is of a very popular TV show that (as always) I can’t reveal until publication. I’m… READ MORE
December 7th, 2011 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Didn’t have time for a more involved sketch today, so here is a small and quick study of the pixie-ish Michelle Williams. READ MORE
December 6th, 2011 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The Huffington Post has an exclusive sneak peek at a few of the “MAD’s 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2011″, including the cover above and this little gem from artist Hermann Mejia: Clicky to Embiggen I have a piece in the MAD 20 as well, and once the issue is out I’ll post it here. In the meantime, check out that sneak peek at the Huffington Post. READ MORE
December 5th, 2011 | Posted in News
Last month I attended a gathering of MAD (Magazine) men in Savannah, GA, which you can read about here if you missed my posts. Present that weekend was CNN’s Todd Leopold who, along with photographer David Holloway, covered the event. They were planning on posting an article about the gathering on CNN.com, and asked me if I would draw caricatures of each of the attending MAD artists to accompany the feature. That article just posted today, and while it is mainly about Al Jaffee (it’s this week’s CNN “Monday Profile”) it does talk about the Savannah weekend and features a little about each artist who… READ MORE
December 4th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I was really impressed with your book, and I also appreciated the reasons you gave as to why you decided to self-publish. I am wondering, though, how are you fulfilling your orders? Are you packaging them up yourself, or using some shipping service? What problems have you encountered in shipping your orders? A: Actually that was one aspect of the self-publishing process I meant to mention but forgot to in that post you cited. It’s another example of how today’s technology enables a self-publisher to operate as efficiently and quickly as an established distributor. PayPal has it’s faults, but the tools it brings to… READ MORE
