News
January 27th, 2015 | Posted in News
As I speak… uh… type, my book The Mad Art of Caricature is running its sixth printing since its release in November of 2011. Copies will be arriving here sometime in early March, depending on the shipping strikes on the west coast. The book will definitely sell out both with me and Amazon before the new printing arrives. Your mileage with bookstore stock may vary. I am truly floored by the staying power of this book. I figured I’d sell a ton of them to caricaturists right away and then see it trickle into obscurity with continued but small sales levels for years after. Instead,… READ MORE
January 23rd, 2015 | Posted in News
The Lovely Anna at NYCC, ready to help you! I tried a bit of an experiment in 2014… doing a lot of comic book conventions. This is something I hadn’t ever done in the past because, well, MAD is sort of the red-headed stepchild of that kind of crowd. Yes, everyone’s heard of it and the magazine has a core group of devoted fans, but it isn’t the sort of thing that gets people to stand in line unless your name is Drucker, Jaffee, Aragonés or others of legendary stature. Still, in the last few years I did start to have something I did not… READ MORE
January 14th, 2015 | Posted in News
Michael Cavna with the Washington Post’s Comic Riffs writes a great piece about satire on this side of the pond and the effects (if any) the Charlie Hebdo massacre may have on it. Interviews with MAD‘s John Ficarra, editorial cartoonists Matt Bohrs, Jack Ohman and Jen Sorenson, and me. READ MORE
January 13th, 2015 | Posted in News
I was a guest on “The Daily Circuit” morning show on Minnesota Public Radio with Kerri Miller this morning. They brought me in to discuss cartooning in the U.S. vs other parts of the world, and to address the issue of “how far is too far” when it comes to satire and editorial cartooning. I’m hardly the guy to ask about that… after all a typical example of my “hard hitting” satirical work would be making fun of Jennifer Lawrence and the latest Hunger Games movie. However, you don’t have to be a practitioner of that type of cartooning to understand it and its social/cultural… READ MORE
January 8th, 2015 | Posted in News
Yesterday’s horrific events at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo threw the world’s cartooning community into simultaneous disbelief, mourning, and anger. As president of the National Cartoonists Society, I spent the day fielding phone calls, emails, posting responses and comments on behalf of the NCS, and doing radio interviews for ABC in Australia and a station in Seattle. For a while I was scheduled to do a live TV interview on “FOX and Friends” this morning but they ended up booking an editorial cartoonist instead (not sure who but I bet they had one of those overrated Pulitzer prizes). Too bad, I was going to… READ MORE
January 6th, 2015 | Posted in News
The National Cartoonists Society posted its call for submissions for the 2014 Divisional Reuben Awards. There are lots of changes in the awards process this year: Electronic (PDF) submissions are not just accepted this year for most divisions, but encouraged All NCS members will be able to nominate creators for consideration via an online nomination process for certain divisions All NCS members will be able to vote for the winners for most divisions via an online voting program where they can compare the nominated artists work and vote. As always, the work being considered must have been published (either in print or for some divisions… READ MORE
December 30th, 2014 | Posted in News
Posting on Tom’s MAD Blog for the next week or two might be a little spotty as we get ready to launch a brand new, redesigned website in early 2015! I’ll still post here and there, but regular posting activity won’t resume until after the launch of the new website. READ MORE
December 19th, 2014 | Posted in News
Unless you live under a rock, you know that last night was the final episode of “The Colbert Report”, and that host Stephen Colbert will be taking over “The Late Show” from David Letterman in 2015. Whenever anyone asks about MAD magazine’s influence on pop culture, invariably how it shaped today’s satirical comedy becomes part of the conversation. The three things I always point to are “The Onion”, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”. All three of those shows are benchmarks of modern satire, and all three publicly cite MAD as a major influence on their work and comedic sensibilities. Colbert even celebrated Al… READ MORE
