One of the few TV shows I have been watching this year has been “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”. I was pleasantly surprised how good it was last year in it’s mid-season short run. One of the things that stuck me was the unusual but very good casting of the show. Lena Headly from “300″ as Sarah?… I thought she would be too soft but she’s got a nice balance between the paranoid pyscho of Linda Hamilton and a more human mother. Summer Glau as Cameron the female terminator? I thought she was too little and delicate but she’s the best part of the show. Other casting like Brian Austen Green and Garrett Dillahunt have also been surprisingly great at their roles.

The really struck a dud with this week’s sketch subject though… Garbage lead singer turned ‘actress’ Shirley Manson. Ugh, she is too mechanical to even play a robot convincingly. I love Garbage’s music but as an actress… bad call. Hopefully they’ll kill off her character quickly. The show is starting to crack at the seams with seemingly endless streams of humans and terminators coming back through time every week, but hasn’t quite jumped the shark yet.

Tags: caricature, Shirley Manson, sketch

Yeah, mon. After a long planned weekend getaway in Jamaica I am now once again behind the eight ball on deadlines. Jamaica was fun. Never been before, but the people there are as friendly as you can get. It seems like you are being a smartass saying “mon” to everyone but they love it when you talk to them in their “patwa”, which is what they call Jamiacan lingo.

Oh, crap. Forgot about the deadlines for a second… Poster job today and then on to an elaborate MAD job.

Tags: deadlines

Front right going counter clockwise: Jan Powell, Jack Pittman, Joe, Su, Linda Maloof,
Robin (peeking out), me, Nick Meglin, Jay Pittman, Grey Blackwell, Dwayne Powell.
Pictures courtesy Jack Pittman.

While I was in Raleigh earlier this month for the NCN convention, I got a chance to sneak away one evening and have dinner with long time MAD editor Nick Meglin, his lovely lady Linda Maloof and a bunch of local cartoonists/artists that get together often and go by the name “The Usual Suspects”. The group included cartoonist and illustrator Jack Pittman, his son, illustrator Jay Pittman, occasional MAD contributor and editorial cartoonist/animator/illustrator Grey Blackwell, Raleigh News/Observer editorial cartoonist Dwane Powell and his wife Jan, musician Joe and wife Su and Linda’s friend Robin who is also an artist. Dinner was great a small italian place called “Vic’s”… dynamite Eggplant Parmigana.

Nick explains how MAD’s lowering standards are to blame
for hacks like me working for the magazine.

Nick is one of the people responsible (or to blame, depending on your perspective) for my getting into MAD Magazine. It was he and Sam Viviano that really encouraged me to keep working at my art and developing my own voice, which eventually led to my first assignment for MAD.

Nick is a funny guy, as you might expect. He’s also a master at insults… sort of like Don Rickles only smarter. The thing with Nick is, the more he likes you the more he insults you. If he’s polite and nice to you, it’s because he either doesn’t know you or he doesn’t like you. Therefore being friends with him is an exercise in trading zingers. I was not aware of this fact nor quite prepared for my first real encounter with Nick as a working artist for MAD.

It happened when I visited New York City shortly after first starting work for MAD. I had done four or so pieces for the magazine by then, and stopped into the offices to get my first tour as one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots”. I was in the art production room at the end of the long hallway that spanned the old 5th floor offices. On the other end of that hallway was Nick and John Ficarra’s offices. I was looking at some original artwork in the MAD flat files when I heard a voice roar at the other end of the hall…

“RICHMOND’S HERE??!? WHERE IS THAT BUM?”

Nick Meglin was stomping down the hall right at me. He looked furious. “I CAN’T BELIEVE THE NERVE OF THAT GUY SHOWING UP HERE!”

Nick stormed right up to me and stuck his finger in my face.

“RICHMOND! Let’s get something straight! I don’t like you! I don’t like your WORK! I don’t LIKE YOUR ATTITUDE!” He then pointed at my feet and yelled, “I DON’T LIKE YOUR SHOES! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT?!?”

Everybody was quiet for a second, and then I said, “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

At that Nick burst into a wide grin, grabbed both my cheeks and shook my head welcoming me to MAD. I bought a new pair of shoes later that day just in case.

Nick is one of the people who really shaped MAD into.. well… MAD. It would never have become the influential, ground breaking publication it did without him.

I had a good time having dinner with him and the NC gang. Great folks. My shoes went unnoticed but Nick still insulted my work.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tags: MAD Magazine, Nick Meglin, Raleigh

Q: Do you have any advice for becoming a professional cartoonist?

A: Ordinarily I would write on and on about a subject like this one, but I’m just going to provide a link to answer this question today because I am

1. lazy
2. unable to come up with a better answer than Chris Browne’s “How to Be a Cartoonist”

That link comes courtesy of the National Cartoonists Society’s website. Chris is of course the writer and artist of “Hagar the Horrible”, and an all around swell guy. He’s got his own blog as well.

Thanks to Grant Jonen for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

Tags: advice, how to be a cartoonist, Mailbag

Holy Frivolous Lawsuits, Batman! Dept.

My pal Zack Wallenfang recently sent me this link from Variety online. I thought it must be a prank… looks like something from “The Onion”:

From Variety Online:

Mayor of Batman sues WB, Nolan

Southeastern city in Turkey fights for name

By ALI JAAFAR

Batman has a new adversary: Batman.

The mayor of an oil-producing city in southeastern Turkey, which has the same name as the Caped Crusader, is suing helmer Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from mega-grosser “The Dark Knight.”

Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused “The Dark Knight” producers of using the city’s name without permission.

“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

No one from the town of Batman has explained why it took so many years to take legal action. Batman first appeared as a comicbook character in 1939 and the “Batman” TV series started in 1966. Tim Burton ’s first bigscreen rendition for Warner Bros. came out in 1989. Undoubtedly the fact that “Dark Knight” is about to pass the $1 billion mark at the B.O. played a part in stirring the ire of the Turkish hamlet.

The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.

Former natives of Batman are also said to have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad.

The mayor is working on gathering evidence he claims will show that the city of Batman predates the 1939 debut of Bob Kane’s superhero in DC Comics.

“We are only aware of this claim via press reports and have not seen any actual legal action,” a Warner Bros. rep said in a statement.

While the town of Batman has suddenly shown great interest in the property, there’s no evidence that the citizenry has ever shown much loyalty to the Caped Crusader — not even on Halloween.

I am pretty sure the lawsuit has no chance of succeeding. Batman has been around as a comic book character since 1939 and even if this hamlet was so named before that, they have had almost 80 years to file a suit for infringing on their rights to the name. I am not sure names of cities have any copyrights to begin with. Part of successfully defending a copyright is to demonstrate a history of defending that copyright.

Back in 1965 Helen Pratt Stuff filed a copyright infringement claim against MAD, claiming her late husband owned the copyrights to the image of Alfred E. Neuman MAD had adopted as their idiotic mascot. Harry Stuff (with a name like that he should have been in adult films) had filed a copyright for “The Original Optimist” in 1914, and his widow renewed that copyright in 1941. She had successfully sued 6 different users of the image prior to 1948 for a total of $2850 in damages. Eventually her case was heard by the Federal Appellate Court in New York as Helen Pratt Stuff, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. E.C. Publications, Inc., William M. Gaines, Independent News Co., Crownpublishers, Inc., Ballantine Books, Inc., Defendants-Appellees., 342 F.2d 143 (2nd Cir. 1965). The lawsuit was dismissed without merit because MAD’s lawyers proved that Stuff had allowed multiple parties to circulate the image without acknowledging the copyright, and had been “most derelict in preventing others from infringing his copyright”. The courts look upon that as abandoning the copyright.

I would imagine the mayor of “Batman” will have a hard time explaining why he waited until a movie with the Batman character in it grossed a billion dollars before defending whatever rights he thinks he or the city has over the name when it’s been in comic books, ardio, TV and films for 80 years.

Tags: Batman, idiots, lawsuit, Turkey