Monday MADness
February 16th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
MAD Magazine fandom lost a really fantastic source of joy and MAD scholars lost a really fantastic resource this past weekend when the MAD Cover Site shut its digital doors forever. All that’s left of its seemingly endless MAD data is a placeholder. The MAD Cover Site was the individual effort of one person, MAD Superfan Doug Gilford. Doug started it on Aug 17th, 1997 as part of the late Dick Hanchette‘s Collectmad.com website. It began as a collection of scans of the all the covers of MAD through the years, along with a list of each issues highlights (or lowlights depending on your perspective).… READ MORE
February 9th, 2015 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at MAD‘s parody of “30 Rock”, written by Arnie Kogen with art by me. From MAD #490, June 2008 (clicky any to embiggen): Pencil roughs Final splash page So, what’s with the odd looking monkey I added in the lower center of the splash on the final? Well, the issue before was the “All Monkey Issue”, and I did the art on a piece showing the MAD staff as monkeys: After the issue came out, the folks at MAD decided they should have added former art director Nadina Simon in that group. So they asked me to draw… READ MORE
February 2nd, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
The following is largely from a previous blog post from 2006, updated a bit to reflect the current state of MAD‘s movie parody output today: I get questioned a lot about the state of MAD movie parodies, usually from people lamenting them as shorter, less frequent and targeting only blockbusters than the ones in the past. There was a time when the latest issue of MAD could be counted on to have at least one movie parody and one TV show parody in it, and often more than one. The parodies averaged over 6 pages in length, and the targets were usually highly regarded dramas… READ MORE
January 26th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at my very first parody for MAD, “Malcontent in the Muddle” written by Desmond Devlin from MAD #403, March 2001. The color digital files from this piece is lost to posterity thanks to a lost CD-ROM and a computer crash in the late 2000’s that corrupted the original files. However, a UK based “Malcolm in the Middle” fan site has high resolution scans of the entire parody online, so here’s a look at those pages (clicky any to embiggen): I was told that Frankie Muniz did not like his caricatures in this piece. Just hearsay, though. Many thanks… READ MORE
January 19th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness features the art I did for Dick DeBartolo‘s parody of the first “Spider-Man” movie with Tobey McGuire. that appeared in MAD #418, June 2002. You remember… when Spider-Man movies were good? (Clicky any to embiggen…) READ MORE
January 12th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
In trying to explain what the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo is to a lot of Americans who had never heard of it, many news sources mentioned MAD Magazine as a comparison. One even went so far as to wonder how the American public would react if a group of gunman went into the MAD offices and gunned down the staff. The comparison does not fit. While MAD is not afraid to take on controversial topics like religion (and does), it does so within certain boundaries. It attacks hypocrisy, abused authority, and dishonesty, not the core beliefs that people hide behind when performing those acts. MAD… READ MORE
January 5th, 2015 | Posted in Monday MADness
How about something a little different this week? The piece above is of longtime editor of MAD Magazine Nick Meglin. When Nick retired from MAD several years ago, they put together a “MAD Book” for him. This is something they used to do for Bill Gaines after each of the famous MAD trips. All the artists and writers who went on the trip would do a piece of art or prose inspired by their adventure, often times very “blue”, off color ,or outrageous, and these pieces would be assembled into a book presented to Bill as a thank you. At some point they started doing… READ MORE
December 29th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness features my artwork from Dick DeBarolo‘s parody of “Hell’s Kitchen” in MAD #470, October 2006. Below are the pencil roughs, final colored art and (bizarrely) the third and forth pages inked and set up in the layout with text in place. I cannot remember why I did that with pages three and four… must have been for a presentation or something demonstrating the pre-color artwork in place. Anyway, clicky any to embiggen: Final splash page art The pencil roughs… Inked with copy, page 3 and 4 spread Page 3 final Page 4 final Panel three features “Pearls Before Swine” cartoonist Stephan… READ MORE
