MADness #134: MAD 20 Anti-Vax Museum!

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Here we go with another step on the sick and diseased road that was my work for MAD Magazine. This week we look back at one of the two pieces I did for MAD #11, February 2020. Written by Sarah Hutto, this piece was prophetic given the time of its release and considering today’s headlines. I will preface this by saying this is one of the pieces I did for MAD I was least proud of art-wise in the 25 years I have been doing work for the magazine.

Pencil sketch

The issue that this was in came out in December of 2019, which was of course only a few months before the world ground to a halt over the COVID-19 pandemic, and shortly thereafter the term “anti-vaxxer” would take on a whole new meaning. That has been magnified tenfold today. MAD has always had a knack for predicting the future.

I’m not proud of my work on this piece because of my poor execution of the final art. This one really called for a realistic painting, which I attempted and I just didn’t pull off. The pencils and general composition are ok, but I needed to have a lot more depth of values in the painting, and more convincing textures, lighting, and color work than I did. Not my best stuff.

This would also proves to be (barring a resurrection of the feature) the last “The MAD 2o Dumbest People, Events, and Things of …” in the magazine. It was also the last issue to feature basically all new material (the Fold-in was a reprint).

I did do a second MAD 20 piece in this issue, which you will have to toon in next week to see. Oh, the anticipation!!!