MADness #90.5: Lightsaber Manual!

May the farce be with you! It’s time for another brush with the dark side as we have a look back and my work for MAD Magazine. This week we look at the second of two pieces I did the art for in MAD #537, Feb 2016. This second feature is called the “ForceSonic 92-cm Lightsaber Manual”, and was written by Scott Maiko.

I was pretty excited to get to do this feature because it was spoofing “Star Wars”, and I have been a Star Wars geek since I was 11 in 1977 and saw the original film 56 times in the local theater that summer (my best friend’s dad owned the theater). MAD has had a long history of parodying Star Wars films and the franchise in general, and while this was an oddball sort of piece it was none-the-less a lot of fun to do.

I can’t remember why I completely redid the caricature of John Boyega on the “cover” of the manual. I’m glad I did because the original was kind of stiff and not very dynamic. I do remember that they wanted me to do that image in color for some reason, even though it was in black and white in the magazine. Here’s the full color version:

Doing the different small spot illustrations was a nice departure from my usual stuff for the magazine. I needed to keep it simple and dry but still “Sell the gag” and add some visual gags of my own. I especially had fun doing the “exploded view” of the lightsaber. I have no copies of the script, if there even was one, but I am pretty sure Scott specified a few of the gags in that illustration, in particular the dreidel and the poiuyt. I know the codon was mine, but I;m not sure who came up with including the “One Ring” from the Lord of the Rings or some of the other stuff. Here’s a much closer look at that:

Of course MAD did this piece in #537 because “The Force Awakens” came out just as this issue did. Little did I know at the time I would get to do the art for the full MAD parody of that movie only two issues later!

In fact, I would also do the art for the last Star Wars parody to appear in MAD, “The Last Jedi” in MAD #1 (the 2018 one, not the 1952 one). But, those are stories for another day!

Toon in next week for a break from the regular MAD stuff as we look at some cover art for some special issues!