Tom's Mad Blog
October 7th, 2008 | Posted in News
Did this sketch on the bus in Germany… Our day at the National Naval Medical Center and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center got cut short because our flight out to Europe left at 6:30 p.m. that night from Dulles. So the six of us were whisked to the airport and boarded our flight on United, headed to London’s Heathrow airport. There we had a two hour wait until our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt departed. We landed at the Frankfurt airport at about 11:30 a.m. local time, which was 5:30 a.m. Washington time. A lot went on with our group during our travels, and during… READ MORE
October 6th, 2008 | Posted in News
The group at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. R to L: Bruce Higdon, Jeff Bacon, Me, Rick Kirkman, Jeff Keane, Stephan Pastis and one of our NNMC guides So now I am rested and recovered (mostly) from the NCS/USO trip to Landstuhl, Germany to visit wounded U.S. soldiers with a group of cartoonists. Prior to flying out to Germany, we spent Monday last week visiting recovering soldiers in the D.C. area. Our group in D.C. consisted of trip organizer Jeff Bacon (“Broadside”/Naval Times), NCS President Jeff Keane (“The Family Circus”), Rick Kirkman (“Baby Blues”), Bruce Higdon (“Punderstatements””/Freelance caricaturist), Stephen Pastis (“Pearls Before Swine”)… READ MORE
October 5th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
A: I have a question (and I don’t think I’ve seen it answered yet!)! Has there ever been a face that no matter how many pictures, video or resources you look at, you just can’t get a grip on it? Myself, I specialize in a variety of anime stylizations, but there’s this one face (Nathan Fillion to be specific) that no matter what I try – anime, traditional caricature, or realism – I can’t quite get it! I’ve been able to create some drawings that people recognize without me having to give clues, but it’s not quite satisfying ME. If you do have one of… READ MORE
October 4th, 2008 | Posted in News
Did I say I’d be at the Minnesota FallCon today?? Thanks to a late flight back from Germany I missed my connection to Minnesota and ended up stuck here in Washington D.C. for the night. I am flying out this morning but of course my flight is already delayed an hour. Figures. If they would have delayed last night’s flight by even 20 minutes I would have made it. As a result I won’t be making it to FallCon today after all. I’ll be there tomorrow, though. Check back on Monday and Tuesday for a complete report of the NCS trip to D.C. and Lansdstahl,… READ MORE
October 3rd, 2008 | Posted in General
Today is travel day back to Minnesota from Germany. In fact as this is posted I should be somewhere over the Atlantic on the way back home. On Monday and Tuesday I will post a complete report of the trip. It was amazing. In the meantime I will be spending this weekend, jet lag and all, set up at the Minnesota FallCon comic book convention taking place at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds both on Saturday and Sunday. I’m not much for appearing at comic book conventions. They are always fun, but MAD is one of those “sort of” parts of the industry. It’s “sort of”… READ MORE
October 2nd, 2008 | Posted in General
I’ve written many times about my practice of listening to audiobooks when in the studio, and especially books by one of my favorite authors Stephen King. As I’ve said before, King’s combination of great storytelling, rich and engaging characters and dialog, plentiful humor and supernatural/strange subject matter makes for the best kind of audiobooks. I’ve been perplexed for years about the lack of certain King audiobooks on either CD or download. Back in the days before iPods and even easily portable CD players I used to check out cassette versions of King’s books and listen to them when working. That was a serious pain in… READ MORE
October 1st, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I had high hopes of doing a sketch here in Germany and then uploading it to the blog and having that serve as the “Sketch o’the Week”. However Landstuhl is a small town and finding a place with a scanner that would serve is proving too convoluted a process, so I am going to cheat this week and post a couple of old sketches for the “Supercapers” job I did this summer that I happened to have on my MacBook Pro. Oliver Muirhead and Tommy “Tiny” Lister Clint Howard These pencils were inked and colored and used in the semi-animated credits of the movie. I… READ MORE
September 30th, 2008 | Posted in MAD Magazine
In the 80’s MAD publisher William M. Gaines and the editorial staff cited twelve pieces of cover artwork from the magazine that they considered the epitome of what MAD was all about.. it’s “heart and soul”. They represented the essential philosophy, type of humor and satirical outlook that MAD had established as it thumbed it’s nose at the world and all those who took it, and themselves, too seriously. He called these classic pieces of art the “Soul of MAD“. Over the years there have been several MAD art auctions by Christie’s and Sothebys that featured a lot of classic MAD art, but the “Soul… READ MORE
