MADness #150- Kaiju Cover!

Don’t look now, but it’s another step on the road that was my work with MAD Magazine. This week we take a peek at the cover of MAD #20, the origins of which are a good lesson in professionalism as an illustrator. This was also the 150th issue featuring some of my work in it.

As I’ve discussed in the last couple of “Tom’s MADness” episodes, MAD had essentially become a publication of reprinted material at this time. Issues featured only a new cover, a new Johnny Sampson “Fold In” and the very occasional new piece inside that was for some special reason or event. Each new issue revolved around some kind of theme, which the cover and Fold-In reflected and the classic material inside would be curated around. This issue was themed around “Movie Monsters”. This was an interesting assignment because I was not supposed to be the artist for this cover.

I received a bit of a frantic email from MAD Grand Poobah Suzy Hutchinson telling me she was in a real bind and asking me if I could do her a huge favor. Another artist had been contracted to do the art for the cover of the next issue and had already turned in a concept sketch, but that artist had just called her and bailed out of the project saying their circumstances had changed and he/she would no longer be able to meet the deadline. Could I pick up this dropped ball and take over the cover art assignment with about a week until the deadline?

This was going to be a tough thing to pull off for me, because I was currently waiting on the feedback from a big ad job (a 16 page promotional comic book for a candy manufacturer) I was working on, that was due in only two weeks. Suzy sent me the other artist’s rough sketch, and of course the entire concept was based on a Don “Duck” Edwing/Jack Davis from MAD #331, Oct/Nov 1994:

In fact, MAD had already been using a colorized version of that last panel as a “placeholder” image for solicitations of MAD #20 for distributors/retailers:

This would not be a very complicated illustration, and I was happy to help Suzy out of a pinch, so I took on the assignment. I stuck with the basics of the previous artist’s layout (which I will not post here), but altered the angles some and based my King Kong and Godzilla on the “Kong vs. Godzilla” 2021 movie look, which this cover was of course supposed to capitalize on. Godzilla was famously a bit chubby in that movie, so I made sure to fatten him up in the art:

Suzy asked for a few tweaks, including adding the MAD zeppelin in the background. I was upset with myself for not including that gag, but in my defense I had been working hard on CLAPTRAP during that time, and had to train myself out of including MAD icons as gags.

This was a winner and I banged out the final art in a day or two. The original was a bit more colorful. Suzy toned down the color in the final print… maybe it was a bit too saturated for their tastes:

The cover elements on the above image were mocked in from the original cover template they sent me.

Suzy refused to tell me who the artist was that quit on this job, although even if she had I would not name them here. Life happens and who knows what the circumstances were that caused that artist to have to back out of the job. I’m certainly not going to judge anyone without the full story, but I hope it was a good reason. Backing out of a job with the deadline looming is very unprofessional, and it leaves the client in a real bind.

Suzy was extremely grateful I was able to pull this off. Honestly it wasn’t a big deal, I was happy to do it. But I told her she owed me, and that I’d like to get another cover sometime where I was involved from the start. She promised me I wouldn’t have to wait very long for that to happen.

In fact it only took three more issues! Look for that story in our next revolting episode!