A Real MAD Cover!

I’ve lately been posting all these “mock” MAD Magazine cover commissions I’ve been doing, so it’s nice that I can now finally show the REAL MAD cover I did a few weeks ago. The gang at MAD (can you call two people, Suzy Hutchinson and Bern Mendoza, a “gang”? I guess so… of IDIOTS!) just revealed the cover of MAD #20, with art by me! This one was a very last second job for reasons I won’t go into. The image is obviously based on what was the “placeholder” image for the advanced solicitations of the issue:

A “placeholder” cover is an image the publisher uses in place of the actual cover of an issue (or book, or some other publication) when they solicit for the sale of the publication to distributors but the final cover is not ready yet, or they don’t want to reveal it. MAD does this all the time. This placeholder image is a panel from a Don “Duck” Edwing and Jack Davis one page gag feature entitled “A Monster Gag” that first appeared in MAD #331, Oct 1994 and was recently reprinted in MAD #16, with color by Carrie Strachan. Suzy and Bern used the final panel of that piece, with the addition of an Alfred head on the falling pilot and the “Gagzilla vs. King Korn” tagline, for use as the placeholder in the advance solicitations. The extra work done on the image plus the addition of the price and issue number/date led to speculation among MAD aficionados this was going to be the actual cover. Close… but nope. The actual cover was to be a reimagining of the same gag.

This is my fourth cover for the magazine, and my first time illustrating a gag written by the late Duck Edwing.

Suzy and Bern did a little tweaking of my original image, which was a lot more color intense. Just for fun here’s the way the cover I turned in looked:

This was probably a bit too colorful and saturated. It was fun to get to do another cover, even on a short turnaround time. Thanks to Suzy for giving me the assignment!