Monday MADness
January 13th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
Back in 2001, much to the chagrin of many long-time fans, MAD began running advertisements in the magazine. Economic realities had to be faced, and the MAD team felt the magazine needed to be updated to color and better paper if they were to interest young readers. They needed revenues to do that and ads were the simplest solution. The concerns people had that MAD‘s ability to be impartial in it’s skewering of corporate America were proven to be unfounded… they went on doing what they’d always done with the same gleeful zeal no matter who was paying to put an ad in the magazine.… READ MORE
January 6th, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
In honor of the end of the football season…well, as a Green Bay Packer fan it’s over for me anyway…here’s a real blast from the past. The following are spot illustrations I did for MAD‘s long-defunct weekly original web feature “MADness of the Week“. This one was from an article on Fantasy Football, circa 2000. The text from the piece is long gone, but the gags are pretty self evident: READ MORE
December 30th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Now that he’s done being the governor of California and (presumably) knocking up the domestic staff, Arnold Schwarzenegger is “bahk” doing action movies at age 66 including a reboot of the “Terminator” franchise in 2015. Here’s a look back at his last turn (not counting a CGI Arnie in “Terminator: Salvation”) as the cyborg killing machine from MAD‘s parody of “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” entitled “Interminable 3: Rise of the Bad Scenes”, MAD #432, August 2003. Writer: Dick DeBartolo. Pencil roughs and finished art… clicky any image to embiggen: Actually the above is the finished pencil, not really a rough. I must have… READ MORE
December 23rd, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness features a few panels from “MAD‘s Inside Scoop On This Year’s Stupidest Holiday Movies” written by Desmond Devlin and Scott Maiko in MAD #459, Nov. 2005 (clicky any image to embiggen): King Kong Tom Cruise‘s lunatic couch-bouncing Oprah appearance was used by computer animators as a basis for one of Kong’s rampages. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire To save time in make-up, Daniel Radcliff agreed to let the famous lightning blot scar be permanently seared into his forehead with a red hot linoleum knife, having made peace with the notion that he will never be known for anything other… READ MORE
December 16th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
The guys at MAD sent me a surprise the other day (it wasn’t a check… that really would have been a surprise). It was this hardcover Superman special printed, and presumably being sold in, France, with my cover illustration: Clicky to embiggen… The inside contains mostly the same material as the MAD Presents Superman magazine special of this past summer, including my parody of Superman Returns. Everything is of course translated into French. It’s hard to scan the interior of a hardcover, but here is one of my pages translated: Sadly, it’s no funnier in French. MAD actually has a long tradition of not only… READ MORE
December 9th, 2013 | Posted in MAD Magazine
On news stands everywhere on Dec. 17th, in comic book shops this week, in some lucky subscriber’s mailboxes already and available digitally immediately via the MAD iPad app: MAD # 525 (February 2014) Cover (Mark Fredrickson) The Fundalini Pages (Jeff Kruse, Aton Emdin, Rick Tulka, Bob Eckstein, Matt Lassen, Justin Peterson, Kevin Pope, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Desmond Devlin, Tom Bunk, Bob Staake, Steven Weissman, Stan Sinberg, John Kerschbaum) The Swallowing (Arnie Kogen, Tom Richmond) Spy vs Spy (Peter Kuper) Planet Tad!!!!! (Writer: Tim Carvell) The MAD 20- The Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2013 The Dysfunctional U.S. Congress (Jay Rath, Tom Richmond) The Boston… READ MORE
December 2nd, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
The great Jack Davis is 89 years old today! This from a post here in 2006: Any conversation about the greatest and most influential cartoonists of the last half century must, at some point, include the name Jack Davis. From the notorious E.C. horror comics of the 1950?s to MAD Magazine to TIME and TV Guide covers, record covers, movie posters, advertising, animation design and even US postage stamps, Davis’s art has entertained, amazed and inspired generations. John Burton “Jack” Davis Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on December 2nd, 1924. An incurable doodler, the young Jack Davis drew on textbooks, writing tablets and anything… READ MORE
November 25th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
In honor of the opening of the latest “Hunger Games” film, here’ a look at 2012’s parody of the first movie. As always, clicky images to embiggen. The writer of the parody was Desmond Devlin. First pencil rough Above is the first pencil rough of the splash. This was a complex splash, because all the word boxes were being spoken by one person (Stanley Tucci’s host character “Cesear Flickerman”), there were a LOT of word boxes, necessitating three rows, and most of them described a character that needed to be near the box that describes them. So, I did something I seldom do . .… READ MORE
