Tom's Mad Blog
April 12th, 2008 | Posted in Surf's Up Dept.
Going MAD in Vain Dept. From the Vanity Fair website: In the May 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, David Hajdu, author of the book The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, pays homage to the “usual gang of idiots” behind Mad magazine. The website has a nice slideshow of 17 covers from the last 60 years of MAD. The article itself is said to contain interviews with many classic MAD artists. I haven’t seen it yet but am on the lookout for a copy. McNutty Cartoons Dept. Over on my friend Cedric Hohnstadt‘s excellent blog I discovered that our mutual… READ MORE
April 11th, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
I get the call in mid February from MAD art director Sam Viviano about doing the art for a five page TV parody of a show called “Samantha Who?” “Never heard of it”, I said truthfully. I’m not a big watcher of TV unless I get assigned a show or get hooked on one after I do the parody. “It’s a new sitcom starring Christina Applegate“, he informs me. Hoo boy. Here we go again. Some time ago I blogged a little about my first real job in cartooning, penciling a comic book for a Chicago based publisher called NOW Comics. NOW was primarily known… READ MORE
April 10th, 2008 | Posted in MAD Magazine
In comic shops now and on news stands April 15th: MAD # 489 (May 2008) Cover (Mark Fredrickson) The Fundalini Pages (Peter Bagge, Tom Bunk, Desmond Devlin, Garth Gerhart, Jeff Kruse, Jacob Lambert, Glen LeLievre, Hermann Mejia, Kevin Pope) What The Heck is the Difference? (Richard Williams) “Slomantha? Who Cares!” (Dick DeBartolo, Tom Richmond) An AT&T Commercial We’d Like To See (Desmond Devlin, Drew Friedman) Other Kid Book Secrets Revealed Now that Dumbledore has Been Outed (Jeff Kruse, Gary Hallgren) Barack and H.C. Ad 1 (Hermann Mejia) If Different Comedians Told the Same Joke (Harrison Greenbaum, Jason Seiler) Bad News Bare-Asses (Sam Sisco Planet TAD!!!!!… READ MORE
April 9th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I added some simple color to this pencil sketch I did last week of actress Kim Basinger in order to incorporate it into a job I was working on. Very rough and blocky, but it is such a small element in the job I didn’t want to spend much time on it. This is about 10 minutes of slapping some digital paint around. READ MORE
April 8th, 2008 | Posted in General
I’m just wrapping up in New England and will be back home tonight. No time for a real post today, so here’s a video link or two you might enjoy: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhgzIM-9lfA[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaIR9dAZRR0[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_O0xYCy1cg[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO2jcwgIi8o[/youtube] READ MORE
April 7th, 2008 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
So I am working feverishly Thursday last week to wrap up a MAD job before I leave for my New England park, and I notice my Mac Pro is acting a little weird. Something is wrong with the networking as none of the other computers on the network are showing up under my “shared” folder. This is certainly not a big deal, as I am really not using any networking features at the time other than my internet connection and FTP program to upload the final art to MAD. However I am a little anal about those kinds of things, so I quit all my… READ MORE
April 6th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Uh oh! Looks like the mailbag is empty! When I get some fresh questions concerning cartooning, illustration, freelancing, MAD Magazine or other similar subjects I’ll be happy to answer them as best I can. E-mail me your questions and I’ll try and answer them here! READ MORE
April 5th, 2008 | Posted in General
I’ll be in Springfield, Mass. for the next several days getting our Six Flags New England theme park operations up and running for the season opener next Saturday, but thanks to the magic of scheduled posting The MAD Blog will continue to grind on. I mentioned a few posts ago that this summer is going to be comic book geek nirvana at the movie theater. In multiplexes this spring and summer: The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2, Iron Man, Speed Racer and The X-Files 2 (okay, those last two are not strictly comic book movies, but close enough). Most of these look pretty… READ MORE
