If you are looking for the blog archives, I have removed them from the sidebar on the right and onto a single page entitled “MAD Blog Archives” under the “Pages” section at the top of the same sidebar. The sidebar was getting too long with the archives, organized by month, under it’s own section. On the new archives page they are still organized by month and year, and there is a handy search box at the top of the page. READ MORE
2002’s “Harry Plodder and the Lamest of Sequels” Click for a closer look Unless you have been living under a rock, as the saying goes, you are probably aware that at midnight tomorrow night, the seventh and final book of J.K. Rowling‘s “Harry Potter” series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will go on sale across the world. An unprecedented 10 million plus copies of this book have been printed, and I have no doubt it will quickly sell out. Our family has two copies reserved already, and The Lovely Anna is considering getting one or two more when she goes to the bookstore with… READ MORE
Finally wrapping up a long run of job on top of job. One small spot to do for MAD and then a few long promised gratis pieces, and then I can almost guarantee I’ll have gotten a few more calls and the board will be busy again. As a freelancer, that is a very good problem to have. Many clients would rather I do not post the finished work prior to publication, but some don’t mind so here are a couple of pieces from the last week: Click for a closer look This is a half page spot for one of the Scholastic magazines. This… READ MORE
I drew caricatures all day Sunday at Valleyfair, and was hoping to get a few new samples done for the display there. Each year I try to get a few new ones done, as there are a lot of repeat customers each year and having the same samples up all the time is boring. New samples make the booth fresher and we can get some timely ones up as well. Timely is good, but I personally like to draw celebrities that aren’t a “flash in the pan” nor ones tied to a current role that might end up being obsolete in a year or so.… READ MORE
Back in April I got a very unusual job from MAD. The client was actually Ballpark Franks (well, actually the Sara Lee Corporation), and they were about to launch a new ad campaign called “hunger”. This campaign was to feature TV and magazine ads with men who, upon seeing a Ballpark Frank hotdog, sprout a hairy and muscular arm from their stomachs which in turn seizes said hotdog for it’s own consumption. Ooooookay. Ballpark Franks and MAD were collaborating on a kind of mini-MAD insert, which was to go into a number of DC comic books as well as the newsstand versions of MAD (for… READ MORE
Q: Which of your MAD spreads you think of as your personal favorite, and why? A: That’s a tough question to answer because everything I do has good and bad points. I have a ritual after each MAD project, in which I clean and organize my studio and print out the final art on my color printer at print size, then sit down and digest it. I always see things I didn’t see before, that I wish I could do over. I’m not talking about overt mistakes like the wrong person saying a line or a missspelling or something… just something that is awkward or… READ MORE
Another panel from the MAD parody… I hate hearing people bash J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books. Yes, it’s always fashionable for those people who think they have better taste than everybody else to dismiss popular fiction (or anything else that’s popular) as drivel for the Great Unwashed, but these books don’t deserve it. I’d agree that the magical fantasy adventures that Rowling has written about the boy wizard might not win any literary awards, and she probably won’t be confused with Hemmingway, Fitzgerald or Capote, but they are playful, imaginative and just plain page turning fun. It’s a rare thing that a book… READ MORE
As promised, here is a smattering of some of the art for the “Harry Plodder and the Torture of the Fanbase” movie parody in this month’s MAD. Two page splash, text and header courtesy of MAD Click on image for a closer look Lot’s more where that came from… this was a 7 pager. Not something you see too often with MAD anymore. Most parodies seem to weigh in at 5 pages maximum. Of course the last time I did a Harry Potter movie for MAD, it was 9 pages! Whew. As I mentioned, The Lovely Anna and our two youngest kids went to see… READ MORE
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