June 1st, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
Possibly the biggest highlight of a weekend full of highlights at the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Awards last week in D.C. was the bestowing of the NCS Medal of Honor to the incomparable Mort Drucker. Mort was the very first recipient of what is sure to become one of the most prestigious lifetime achievement awards in all of cartooning. Here’s the story: I just finished serving two terms (four years) as president of the NCS. Since I took office I have had multiple people come to me and ask why (insert name of legendary cartoonist) had not been honored with the NCS Milton Caniff Lifetime… READ MORE
May 25th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Loot Crate is a grab bag (okay… grab BOX) program where you receive a box full of stuff every month for a subscription fee. It’s geared towards geeks and gamers, and each month the box has a “theme”. May 2015’s theme is “Unite”, and included in the box is a special edition of MAD exclusive to Loot Crate. I have yet to see an actual copy of this issue, so I am unsure how much of the content is reprint material and how much is original. As you can see the cover is an exclusive done by Mark Fredrickson, and I know it contains an… READ MORE
April 20th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
In comic book shops, on the iPad and in subscribers mailboxes now, on news stands everywhere tomorrow: Cover (Mark Fredrickson) “Weird AL” Welcome (Al Yankovic, Hermann Mejia) Letters and Tomatoes (Answered by Al Yankovic) The Fundalini Pages (Kenny Keil, Chris Houghton, John Kerschbaum, Joe Dator, Ward Sutton, Desmond Devlin, Kevin Pope, Dick DeBartolo, Teresa Burns Parkhurst) The Weird Al-ini Pages (Anton Emdin, Patton Oswald, Scott Bricher, Seth Green, Bob Staake, Chris Hardwicke, Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist, James Warhola, Emo Philips, Rick Tulka, Thomas Lennon, John Hodgman) Pages From Weird Al’s Notebook (Al Yankovic, Sam Sisco, Sam Viviano (uncredited)) Things You Never want to Learn… READ MORE
March 30th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
Because of the way movie distribution and longevity in the theaters had changed since the 20th century, the MAD movie parody became a lot harder to do. I wrote extensively about it here, but the short version is that even big money-making movies seldom spend more than four or five weeks in theaters these days, and by the time the movie parody comes out (usually a three month lag) the film it spoofed is old news. For a few years in the early-mid 2000’s, MAD tried to do movie parodies in advance of the film’s release. We worked from trailers, bootleg movie scripts, books/comics… READ MORE
March 23rd, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
Seeing as how Mort’s 86th birthday was yesterday, I thought today I would repost this story I originally blogged in 2006. It’s about how I ended up getting the incredible caricature of me you see above by the incomparable Mr. Drucker himself, and how that eventually led to my being in the National Cartoonists Society, working for MAD, and a whole lot of other wonderful things: Sept. 19, 2006: As I wrote last week, Saturday the 23rd was The Lovely Anna and my 18 year wedding anniversary. We had a lovely dinner in an excellent french restaurant in Minneapolis… it’s nice to be married to… READ MORE
March 16th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at some of the art I did for the parody of the second Harry Potter movie: “Harry Plodder and the Lamest of Sequels”, written by Desmond Devlin, from MAD #424, Dec 2002. This parody is my record for length of any piece I ever did for MAD, weighing in at whopping 9 pages! Sadly, it seems that 5 of the original digital files of those pages are lost, as¬¨‚Ć I only found the splash page and pages 3 and 4 on my hard drive… (clicky any to embiggen): READ MORE
March 9th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
In MAD #475, March 2007, I did the art for one of MAD‘s “Deconstructing TV Talk Shows” recurring feature. This one was of “The Best Damn Sports Show Period”, written by Desmond Devlin. The cast of the show were great sports and they brought out the issue on the air: [youtube]http://youtu.be/DQRUsBP_rpo[/youtube] Here’s some of the art from that: READ MORE
March 2nd, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a peek behind the scenes at the pencil sketches for MAD‘s “House of Cards” parody, written by David Shayne, appearing in MAD #532 NOW ON SALE!! These were drawn digitally on my big-ass Cintiq 24HD. Clicky any to embiggen… READ MORE
