Tom's Mad Blog
December 30th, 2010 | Posted in News
Every U.S. publication having periodical publication mail privileges must furnish to the Postal Service and publish somewhere in their publication a “Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation” (required by the Act of August 12, 1970, Section 3685, Title 39 of the United States Code). This is usually done in a publication’s year end issue. Yesterday on The Beat comics blog they posted an examination of the 2010 DC Comics circulation figures. MAD publishes theirs in the last issue on the news stands of the year. According to the figures in issue #507, MAD‘s annual paid distribution average per issue in 2010 was 188,825. That’s up… READ MORE
December 29th, 2010 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
The Lovely Anna and I went to see “True Grit” this past weekend. I loved it… she was ambivalent. Must be a guy flick. Jeff Bridges was fantastic and the trademark razor sharp dialogue of the Cohen Brother’s films was very prevalent. Sketch done with a Uni-ball Vision Micro-tip ball point pen… not much of a caricature but and interesting face to draw. READ MORE
December 28th, 2010 | Posted in General
A happy 88th birthday to comic book writing legend Stan Lee. Just like he does in all the Marvel superhero movies, Stan’s made a cameo in all my MAD parodies of Marvel superhero movies (two most recent samples below). No doubt he’s thrilled about that and it will be a big topic of conversation at his birthday party tonight… … or maybe not. READ MORE
December 27th, 2010 | Posted in Freelancing
As an illustrator, and especially one who does a lot of caricature work, I often spend a lot of time preparing reference for a given project. I’ve written before about how the internet and image searches like Google image have revolutionized that process in recent years. In the “old days”, illustrators had gigantic “morgue files” stuffed with clipped pictures of people, places and things where they went to find reference for some given subject they needed to draw. I used to have two file cabinets full of celebrity pictures clipped from entertainment magazines that I’d pull out when I needed to do caricatures of somebody.… READ MORE
December 26th, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Q: I read in your blog post about the increasing scarcity of original commercial art that you have never done a cover for MAD Magazine proper. I was wondering when we are going to see a Richmond cover? A: The post the question is referring to is here, if anyone is interested. The answer to your question is likely next door to never. MAD‘s covers are a different animal than the interior art, and most require a certain style of artwork that is not my fort?¬©: the realistic painting. MAD covers are singular and necessarily high impact gags that the editors and staff spend a… READ MORE
December 24th, 2010 | Posted in General
No matter your faith, nationality or planet of origin, here’s wishing peace, health and happiness to you and your family at this special time of year. READ MORE
December 23rd, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, here are some of the images from my parody of the new Harry Potter movie in MAD #507, written by Desmond Devlin: Splash page- Click for a closer look… Here’s the pencil rough of the splash- Click for a closer look… A few panels from the story: I got a bit of a surprise when The Lovely Anna mentioned she’d like to appear in this parody, specifically as the character “Mafalda Hopkirk”, who Hermione impersonates to get into the Ministry of Magic in the film (and the book). Thus: Yes, that’s The Lovely Anna in the striped suit being bossy… My apologies to… READ MORE
December 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s SOTW is “Today Show” weatherman Al Roker. After the Sunday Mailbag question on what I used for my weekly sketches I decided to try some new things just for fun. This was drawn with a Pigma Micron marker/pen with a few touches from a Pitt brush pen added. READ MORE
