MADness #77: Watchmen!

Wackjob’s Journal- April, 2009: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. Movie dead at box office after promising opening weekend. Critics blasting it for being confusing and way too long. Fanboys hating on it for changing the ending… thank God Twitter still in its infancy. Worse, MAD Magazine did a parody of it in their 499th issue dated April 2009. The usual hatchet job by Devlin and Richmond. Going for some beans. Hurm.

Yes… It’s yet another super hero movie parody.! The only thing I remember about this one was trying to come up with funny ways to not show Dr. Manhattan’s blue junk throughout the spoof. Having the falling button pin cover it in the splash is an example… although looking back on it now I should have made more of an effort to show the pin was falling and not like Dr. Manhattan had it pinned to his crotch. Ah well…

Like virtually everyone I loved the original “Watchmen” comic/Graphic novel so getting to do the art for the movie parody was a real treat.

I don’t recall if the guys at MAD told me that they planned on doing black gutters and spaces between the panels, or if they just decided to do that. It wasn’t part of the layouts, so I presume they decided later. It’s lucky it worked out, because after designing the pages in CLAPTRAP I can tell you that the panels needed to be bright with enough contrast to the edges for that to work, and that’s best when the artist knows to do that.

That’s it for this week’s Monday MADness! Note this was issue #499… the next issue was the big 500th, which was both a major milestone and the start of a lot of bad things for the magazine. Toon in next week for that story.