Monday Madness #39- Medium!

You don’t have to be a psychic to know that today is Monday, and it’s time for another look back at my work for MAD Magazine. Today we part the mists of the paranormal with a look at MAD‘s spoof of the TV show “Medium”, first appearing in MAD #454, June 2005, written by Dick DeBartolo. The show starred Patricia Arquette, Jake Webber and Miguel Sandoval. I’ve always like this splash page. I had a lot of fun with the lighting using two opposing light sources of very different colors. I also liked how the sleeping dog turned out. Patricia Arquette’s feet?… not so much.

Take a look at the intro next in the rough sketch above. This is sometimes (actually quite often) what I’d get from MAD in the layouts they’d send me, some kind of placeholder copy. This one is most definitely a jab at the editors from the art department, complaining that they can’t finish they layouts of the splash until the editors deliver the final intro copy.

I had some fun with Arquette’s character’s penchant for wearing blouses about two sizes too small that made it look as if her very ample bosom was a few straining button-threads away from bursting forth… so there are popping buttons galore throughout this spoof.

The murderer in this parody is a friend and fellow caricaturist named Dan Minamide aka “Dan the Cartoon Man”. I also tossed in as many “ghost” cameos as I could come up with. This was one of those shows that I didn’t hate or love, it was just sort of there so that makes it harder to come up with funny gags related to the show itself.

Toon in next week for a look at the first movie parody I actually lobbied the MAD staff to do the art for! Holy arrogance, Batman!