Tom's Mad Blog
January 29th, 2007 | Posted in News
Over on his excellent blog, Mark Evanier is busy shaming other cartoonist bloggers to get on board and help promote National Gorilla Suit Day, which as everybody knows takes place on January 31st each year. I am ashamed to say I have not done my part. The banner above links to this article (links removed as Mark took down those pages) by Mark about the mysterious origins of National Gorilla Suit Day. It began, as almost all nonsensical and idiotic things do, with Don Martin. A series of cartoons in the 1964 book Don Martin Bounces Back! concerns the misadventures of Fester Bestertester and his… READ MORE
January 28th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What’s the deal with “Mad Kids“? I’m curious what the target market is for Mad vs. Mad Kids or why they started Mad Kids. A: MAD Kids is a recent addition to the MAD family. It’s a quarterly publication from the folks that bring you MAD that is geared towards a younger audience. Why, you say? Isn’t MAD already geared towards kids? No, not really. The regular magazine contains some kid humor, mostly in the form of gross out jokes, but when you really get down to it, MAD contains pretty adult humor. There is no outright swearing in MAD, nor is there any… READ MORE
January 27th, 2007 | Posted in General
Once a year The Lovely Anna and I take a vacation to Hawaii. We have a convenient timeshare on Maui that is like our home away from home. No kids… they stay home with a good friend of the family who moves in for a week. It’s our week away where we recharge our parental batteries and do some serious relaxing. As usual I had to pull some late nights to get all my jobs done before we leave. Mission accomplished. You’ll be able to read all about our gastronomic adventures on Maui on Anna’s blog: Anna’s Foodie Reviews. Other than tomorrow’s mailbag I do… READ MORE
January 26th, 2007 | Posted in General
Fellow caricaturist Ryan Biddle, who does caricatures in a resort at the Wisconsin Dells as well as personal commissions, murals and portraits, sent me these pictures from a trip he took to NYC some time ago. These are six of my older samples on the closer board… They redrew the body but the head is a Xerox Naughty, naughty! I recognize some of these also. There’s a Kruger, bottom left… Chris Rommel’s Julia Roberts I think this will be my last post on this subject, unless I see some in Timbuktu or some other far away place. It’s getting tiresome and it’s just the same… READ MORE
January 25th, 2007 | Posted in News
I’ve written several times about the Orphan Works legislation, and it’s implications on freelance illustrators. This post describes it best, but here it is in brief: The Orphan Works Act is a change to copyright law that allows any party (publishers, advertisers) to use a piece of intellectual property (a photo, illustration, cartoon, etc.) if the owner of the copyright of said piece of intellectual property cannot be identified or located. The law requires a ‘reasonable effort’ to search for the copyright owner, but does not define what a ‘reasonable search’ entails. The law also limits the money that can be recouped by the copyright… READ MORE
January 24th, 2007 | Posted in General
I’m still working hard on that MAD TV parody, but had to take a break Tuesday to wrap this poster job up: Now it’s back to working on the color for the parody. The splash spread alone is taking a lot longer than a normal splash, as it has a lot going on in it. As I mentioned I cannot post any sneak peeks at the art, but it will be in issue #476, on the stands in March. READ MORE
January 23rd, 2007 | Posted in General
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January 22nd, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Our house is a three level home including a finished basement that, while not a ‘walkout’ does have full windows on two sides, the other side being built into the side of a small hill. My studio is one corner room, and the other corner with two windowed walls for years was the kid’s rec room AKA disaster area. Whenever I saw pictures on the news of some town torn up by a tornado I always did a double take, wondering at first how those pictures of our basement got on TV. The floor might not be seen for weeks on end. Four kids worth… READ MORE
