Tom's Mad Blog
May 1st, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
The next generation of DVD format war is just heating up, with Sony‘s Blu-Ray and Toshiba‘s HD-DVD still in it’s retail infancy. The upcoming holiday season will be the first real indicator of which one will end up the dominant format, but it may be a year or to before anything is really decided. Clearly high definition is the format of the near future to replace the aging standard DVD. For now early adopters and home theater enthusiasts have their choice of any number of Blu-Ray players from several manufacturers, or the Toshiba line of HD DVD players (I went over many of the differences… READ MORE
April 30th, 2007 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Sculpture by MADman Hermann Mejia MAD artist Hermann Mejia has finally gotten a website up showcasing his incredible work. Check it out here. Hermann has been working for MAD for quite some time now, and from the beginning his art was something special. He used to do a feature called “Celebrity cause of Death Betting Odds”, where he illustrated a tombstone with a crazy caricature/statue integrated into it to accompany the odds of various ways the celebrity might met their end. That was a great little feature and made greater by Hermann’s fantastic art. Eventually he started doing parodies of films and TV shows as… READ MORE
April 29th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have unsuccessfully searched the web and several art books on the simple topic of Inkwashing. I would like to know the technique for preparing the wash. Do you mix the ink and water ad hock as you are using it, or do you measure out 1 or 2 drops per ounce of water into several containers and create your own solutions for use later on? I have arbitrarily made some batches but it seems to me there must be some standard procedures?? A: I don’t do a lot of ink and wash illustrations anymore as it’s so much easier to just add the… READ MORE
April 28th, 2007 | Posted in General
For the second time in as many weeks, I’m currently away from the studio visiting my theme park operation at Six Flags New England. Each year the spring is a hectic time for me. In addition to my usual freelance jobs and business work, it’s opening time for my caricature/art concessions in the seasonal parks. Our operations here in Massachusetts opened on April 15th, Six Flags St. Louis opened on April 21st and Valleyfair! in Minnesota opens May 12th. There is a lot to do, settijng up displays, hauling out the equipment, cleaning it and getting it set up, replacing the things that are breaking… READ MORE
April 27th, 2007 | Posted in General
A quick sketch study of super-villian Sylar I finally got the chance to see the new episode of “Heroes” the other night, in glorious HD. It was a long wait for a new episode, but as I expected it was worth it. SPOILERS AHEAD! It was no surprise this series picked right back up where it left off. One of the brilliant things about this show is how effortlessly it jumps from sub-plot to sub-plot, and maintains both interest and development in almost all of them. The Nikki/Jessica storyline seemed to me to be the least engaging before the break (save maybe the Hiro one,… READ MORE
April 26th, 2007 | Posted in General
The “Dark Tower” comic book series from Marvel, based on the Stephen King novels, is now on it’s third issue. I wrote reviews of the first two here and here, and while I liked some aspects of the comics and approach, I knew I had to give the series a few issues to gel and try and find it’s footing before really deciding on my opinions of it as a whole. This will be my last review of any of the series, at least until it takes a different creative and/or editorial approach than it’s current format. I guess that bodes ill for my opinions… READ MORE
April 25th, 2007 | Posted in General
Yesterday I wrote about the new issue of GAG! Magazine and recommended visiting it’s website. Sadly, upon visiting said site and reading around a bit I saw the inevitable comparison of GAG! to MAD. That always made me angry with the old Cracked, when Dick Kulpa and Co. always had to compare their publication to MAD, of course always proclaiming they were better. Barry suffers from the same delusions apparently, where he says : “GAG! is funnier than MAD, that is for sure. MAD reached its peak in the late 1960s/early 70s, and has been losing readers ever since.” That first comment is just natural… READ MORE
April 24th, 2007 | Posted in General
Back when I was briefly working for Cracked I did the artwork on a few parodies written by Barry Dutter. I enjoyed Barry’s writing and thought he came up with some pretty good gags and observations on the films. Cracked was doomed and did not run for very long under the Dick Kulpa era for several reasons, many of which I examined here. Barry left the magazine and started his own publication called GAG! with issue # 1 coming out in 2004. He just published his second issue… er… actually it’s another #1…. here in 2007. Barry and I still keep in contact a little,… READ MORE
