News
May 11th, 2012 | Posted in News
Bring on the lazy, obligatory “Holy (fill in the blank), Batman!” headlines. A near mint copy of Batman #1 sold recently through Heritage Auctions in a private transaction for $850,000. According to this story on CNN.com, this same copy was purchased by a collector three years ago for a mere $315,000. Not a bad return. It was sold to an “investment group” who I am sure are all avid comic book fans. These types of stories have become commonplace lately, as the price of rare and historically-significant (at least historically in the world of pop culture and comic books) comics have skyrocketed in the last… READ MORE
May 7th, 2012 | Posted in News
Earlier today I blogged about the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning’s Kickstarter campaign needing some support. Well, I’ve put a little of my artwork where my mouth is. The KFoC just added a new reward for a $400 or greater donation…an original page from MAD Magazine donated and signed by myself. There are five of these available, and I am sure the stampede for them will be fast and furious!!!! (crickets chirping . . .) Well, maybe not, but it is another option for those who are interested. All five pieces will be pages from a TV or movie parody that appeared in MAD. I’ll also… READ MORE
May 7th, 2012 | Posted in News
[vimeo width=”480″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/40327768[/vimeo] A week or two ago I blogged about the Kickstarter campaign to fund the second annual Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. Things started out with a bang with the drive but there is still a long way to go. Check out the video above, produced by Tall Tale Radio’s Tom Racine, to find out about the festival. If you can help out, even with just a small donation, please do. These kinds of public cartooning events are few and far between, and not everybody likes to go to comic cons to meet their favorite cartoonists . . . stormtrooper costumes get rank very… READ MORE
May 1st, 2012 | Posted in News
The second printing of The Mad Art of Caricature! has arrived…just in time as I was down to my last hundred or so copies. They look good, with the same high quality, glossy, color pages and tight binding. No new content, but a few stray typos and corrections were made. The big news this time around is I have an official distributor, Itasca Book Distributors, which means the book will soon be available through wholesalers like Ingram. What this means is that brick and mortar stores like Barnes and Noble will now be able to order and carry my book. Booksellers basically refuse to carry… READ MORE
April 30th, 2012 | Posted in News
…sort of. The original name of this blog was supposed to be Tom’s MAD Blog!, but in the ensuing craziness that was the website redesign some time ago the graphics came to read The MAD Blog!. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because it didn’t seem very important. Well, MAD Magazine now has it’s own blog, and while it’s called The Idiotical and not The MAD Blog, it seemed to me that it might be a bit confusing to some people doing a search for “MAD Magazine Blog” that this blog would be one of the top hits. I didn’t want anyone… READ MORE
April 23rd, 2012 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The show “What, Me Worry? 60 Years of MAD” opened this past weekend at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Fransisco, CA. Here’s one of many pictures you’ll find on the CAM Facebook page: Clicky to Embiggen… Shown above: MAD #1 cover reproduction, hand-colored by Marie Severin; Hex! splash page by Jack Davis from MAD #2; Melvin! splash page by John Severin, from MAD #2; cover to MAD #3 by Harvey Kurtzman; splash from Dragged Net! by Will Elder from MAD #3; cover to MAD #4 by Harvey Kurtzman; splash page from Shadow! by Will Elder, from MAD #4; house ad by Wally Wood from… READ MORE
April 19th, 2012 | Posted in News
Last year I was honored to be one of the speakers at a fantastic cartooning event in Kenosha, WI called…oddly enough…the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. The festival was organized by Anne Hambrock, wife and assistant of cartoonist John Hambrock (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee), and featured Tom Bancroft, Sandra Bell Lundy, Paul Gilligan, John Read, Scott Standis, John and myself. While there were no guarantees this would become a recurring event, it was such a big hit there was a lot of talk about having another one down the road. Well, Anne and Company are ready to go down that road . . .… READ MORE
April 3rd, 2012 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, on Sunday DC Entertainment and MAD Magazine released the MAD iPad app (which I am unofficially calling iMad, so no lawsuits, Apple!) Here’s a hands-on tour of the new app: Getting Started First off, while it is an “app”, it downloads into the Apple “Newsstand” area, not directly on to the iPad pages, which makes sense. On the Newsstand! Looks lonely… I may have to subscribe to other magazines. Do they still make Tigerbeat? Once you open the app, you are asked if you want push notifications when a new issue is available (I said yes), and then you are taken to a… READ MORE
