Tom's Mad Blog
December 18th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I was definitely not driving a train high on cocaine when I did this week’s sketch, but it might have turned out better if I had been. We return to our “classic rock” series theme this week with a sketch of the late “Grateful Dead” frontman. I’m not sure how grateful he is about it, but he’s most definitely dead. I have to admit I have never really listened to “Grateful Dead”, although I have enough friends who love them to know it is “Grateful Dead” not “THE Grateful Dead”. I try to avoid the all-too-often pessimist’s sneering dismissal of pop culture phenomenons that they… READ MORE
December 13th, 2024 | Posted in General
Just in time for Christmas, I’ve scheduled two new workshops in 2025… Toronto and Seattle! There are still plenty of spots available in Las Vegas also, but only two left in Los Angeles. These workshops are unique experiences and make a great gift to the hard-to-buy-for artist in your life. Visit here for more info on what my workshops are all about! READ MORE
December 4th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Holy Huge Eyeballs, Batman! This week’s caricature sketch subject is the doll-like acting dynamo that was one of the main reasons “The Penguin” tv series was so good… Cristin Milioti! It’s no secret I am a big fan of Batman. While I can appreciate most takes on the character and his rogues gallery of villains (except 1997’s “Batman and Robin”, that was a gigantic piece of steaming garbage) I thought “The Penguin” TV series might be the best depiction of any of Batman’s nemeses to date. The Penguin is an essentially silly character. Attempts to make him formidable or truly villainous outside of a cartoon exaggeration… READ MORE
November 27th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I was on vacation last week in Orlando with no access to a scanner, so I did my SotW entirely digitally. Here’s Sir Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter from “The Silence of the Lambs”. READ MORE
November 25th, 2024 | Posted in General
What? Another Monday?!? As if the end of the weekend was not bad enough, here comes another step on the rapidly dwindling road that was my work for MAD Magazine! This week was look back as what for a number of years seemed like it would be the final full movie parody to appear in MAD. I’m talking about MAD’s spoof of “Aquaman” from MAD #7 (June 2019) written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin. The reason this seemed this one might be the curtain call for MAD movie parodies is that it was at this point in the MAD timeline, February of 2019, that… READ MORE
November 20th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Brad Pitt makes his second appearance in our “Famous Movie Moments” series as Tyler Durden from the 1999 film “Fight Club”. This sketch is all about exaggerating body posture and physicality. In sharing last week’s sketch of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty from “Blade Runner”, I mentioned that film was the one I absolutely insisted we include in CLAPTRAP. “Fight Club” was the other one I really wanted to do, but it just missed the cut. It’s one of those movies that actually would be tricky to spoof, because it is already a satire of consumerism and toxic masculinity. But, figuring that stuff out that… READ MORE
November 18th, 2024 | Posted in General
Monday AGAIN?? Here we go with yet another step on the crooked path of mediocrity that was my work for MAD Magazine. This week we look back at a kinda-sorta movie parody (but not really) from MAD #6, written by Ian Boothby. This piece was done right as “Mary Poppins Returns” starring Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda was released. It’s not a parody of the movie but an original story using the characters. That does not count as an actual movie parody of course. It’s a political feature. I happen to have full scans of the final inks of this splash because I had the… READ MORE
November 13th, 2024 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
When Desmond Devlin and I decided to do CLAPTRAP Des made a list of significant films that MAD never did a parody of for one reason or another. There was one movie I knew would be on that list, and it was the one movie I insisted we include in the book- Ridley Scott‘s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece “Blade Runner”. Actually I did not have to work very hard to convince Des to do it, the movie was high on his list as well. Why didn’t MAD spoof “Blade Runner”? No one knows for sure but it’s likely because the movie didn’t do all that well… READ MORE
