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Tom's Mad Blog

Sketch o’the Week

February 25th, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week

A very quick (I’m talking 10 minute) study of somebody I’d better get used to doing caricatures of…¬¨‚Ä† U.S. President Barack Obama. READ MORE

Watchmen Parody Sneak Peek

February 24th, 2009 | Posted in MAD Magazine

Click for a Closer Look MAD had a difficult dilemma concerning their proposed parody of the movie “Watchmen”… the question of when to do it. For once the problem was not in getting a reliable advanced script. MAD occasionally tries doing movie parodies prior to the release of the films, so that they will be on the stands around the same time the films were hot. This doesn’t always work out, as the source material the writers would work from were often leaked scripts that didn’t turn out to be accurate… like the time we got the ending wrong for “X-Men 2”. Supposedly the source… READ MORE

On the Stands: MAD #499

February 23rd, 2009 | Posted in MAD Magazine

In comic book stores now and on news stands on Feb. 24th: MAD # 499 (April 2009) Cover (Mark Frederickson) The Fundalini Pages (Desmond Devlin, Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dwyer, Drew Friedman, Garth Gerhart, Marc Hempel, Darren Johnson, Jeff Kruse, Barry Liebmann, Kevin Pope, Sam Sisco, Ward Sutton, Jason Yungbluth) What the Heck is the Difference? (Uncredited) Botchmen (Desmond Devlin, Tom Richmond) A MAD Look at Trade Schools (Sergio Aragon?¬©s, Colorist: Luth) Digital TV Facts (Jeff Kruse) The Decided Disadvantages of an On-Line Education (John Caldwell) The Darker Side of the Lighter Side (Dave Berg, Uncredited) A Letter from Jamie Dimon (Dick DeBartolo) MAD’s Unheroic… READ MORE

Sunday Mailbag

February 22nd, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag

Q: I’m a college student, and I have very little time as it is, but I also freelance and am about to start drawing caricatures at a theme park for the summer as well… so I have a lot on my plate. Recently I’ve put on a few pounds (more like 20ish…), because I haven’t been eating well or exercising like I used to, because I don’t have the time. My question to you is, how on earth do you find time to make it to the gym, or not eat garbage all the time? A: The quick answer is… I often don’t find the… READ MORE

Great BBC Caricature Video Short

February 21st, 2009 | Posted in Surf's Up Dept.

Frequent reader of The Mad Blog and fellow Minnesotan Marv Sohlo emailed me a link to this video which features a short but informative piece on caricatures and why they resonate so much with people. It’s from the BCC show “The Human Face” narrated by John Cleese. Unfortunately the creators do not allow embedding, but click on the screen capture to go to the YouTube clip: Click on the image for the full clip… it’s less than 2 minutes…. we’ll wait… I’ve always said that a really good caricature looks more like the subject than a photo does, and some of the observations this video… READ MORE

Magical Audiobooks Revisited

February 20th, 2009 | Posted in General

Whew. In the last 4 1/2 weeks I have done back to back projects for MAD (6 page parody of the movie “Watchmen”) and a 13 page comic book (with inks by the great Tom Nguyen) promoting the movie “Super Capers”, which will be given away at WonderCon next weekend in San Francisco, as well ans a handful of smaller jobs. That’s a lot of hours spend in the studio penciling, inking and coloring. How many hours? I don’t know, I never keep track of the time. However I can measure it in audiobooks. It took me the entire seven books in the Harry Potter… READ MORE