Sketch O’The Week
January 8th, 2025 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
SotW is back for 2025 (although I did this one at the end of 2024). I’m going back to both my “Classic Rock” series and my hard rock roots with this week’s sketch of the late heavy metal icon Ronnie James Dio. As a kid I was a real metalhead, listening to bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, AC/DC and the like. I liked Rainbow with Dio on lead vocals, but it was when he took over as the vocalist for Black Sabbath that I became a big fan. It was always hard to believe that big voice came out of that little guy (Dio… READ MORE
December 18th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I was definitely not driving a train high on cocaine when I did this week’s sketch, but it might have turned out better if I had been. We return to our “classic rock” series theme this week with a sketch of the late “Grateful Dead” frontman. I’m not sure how grateful he is about it, but he’s most definitely dead. I have to admit I have never really listened to “Grateful Dead”, although I have enough friends who love them to know it is “Grateful Dead” not “THE Grateful Dead”. I try to avoid the all-too-often pessimist’s sneering dismissal of pop culture phenomenons that they… READ MORE
December 4th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Holy Huge Eyeballs, Batman! This week’s caricature sketch subject is the doll-like acting dynamo that was one of the main reasons “The Penguin” tv series was so good… Cristin Milioti! It’s no secret I am a big fan of Batman. While I can appreciate most takes on the character and his rogues gallery of villains (except 1997’s “Batman and Robin”, that was a gigantic piece of steaming garbage) I thought “The Penguin” TV series might be the best depiction of any of Batman’s nemeses to date. The Penguin is an essentially silly character. Attempts to make him formidable or truly villainous outside of a cartoon exaggeration… READ MORE
November 27th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I was on vacation last week in Orlando with no access to a scanner, so I did my SotW entirely digitally. Here’s Sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter from “The Silence of the Lambs”. READ MORE
November 20th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Brad Pitt makes his second appearance in our “Famous Movie Moments” series as Tyler Durden from the 1999 film “Fight Club”. This sketch is all about exaggerating body posture and physicality. In sharing last week’s sketch of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty from “Blade Runner”, I mentioned that film was the one I absolutely insisted we include in CLAPTRAP. “Fight Club” was the other one I really wanted to do, but it just missed the cut. It’s one of those movies that actually would be tricky to spoof, because it is already a satire of consumerism and toxic masculinity. But, figuring that stuff out that… READ MORE
November 13th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
When Desmond Devlin and I decided to do CLAPTRAP Des made a list of significant films that MAD never did a parody of for one reason or another. There was one movie I knew would be on that list, and it was the one movie I insisted we include in the book- Ridley Scott‘s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece “Blade Runner”. Actually I did not have to work very hard to convince Des to do it, the movie was high on his list as well. Why didn’t MAD spoof “Blade Runner”? No one knows for sure but it’s likely because the movie didn’t do all that well… READ MORE
November 6th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
About a month ago (October 3rd to be exact), would have been the 100th birthday of the legendary creator of MAD, cartoonist, writer and editor Harvey Kurtzman. So I decided to take a breather from the “Famous Movie Moments” series and draw Harvey. Just to do something different I did this one using brush pens! READ MORE
October 30th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This original is still available in the Studio Store! Jamie Lee Curtis came by her “Scream Queen” moniker honestly. Her role in John Carpenter‘s 1978 “Halloween” began a whole new genre of scream queens/slasher films, but it was already “in her blood” you could say… and not the blood she left in the hallway in the movie! Her mother was Janet Leigh, one of the stars of Alfred Hitchcock‘s horror classic “Psycho”, and one of the original scream queens. READ MORE
