Tom's Mad Blog
July 12th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
It’s the big one!!! I’m comin’, Elizabeth!! It’s back to the 1970’s with our sitcom series, this week featuring one of my all time favorites, Demond Wilson and Redd Foxx of “Sanford and Son”. I was surprised a few years ago to learn that “Sanford and Son” was not an original show, but an American remake of a British show called “Steptoe and Son” from the early 1960s. The BBC show was about a grumpy old man and his son who ran a struggling old junkyard/salvage business. “Sanford and Son” came about because of the success of another American sitcom that was adapted from a British show. “All in… READ MORE
July 10th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Wake up and hit the showers, jailbirds! It’s another MAD Monday, And that means it’s time for another look back at the hard time in the hole that was my work for MAD Magazine. Don’t worry, you are not really incarcerated serving life in a hellhole of despair and misery… it just feel that way every time you see these posts. Last week we looked at a spoof of a TV show that was among my least favorite to have done for MAD. This week it’s a 180 degree swing, with a gander at one of my all time favorite MAD jobs. Here’s MAD‘s parody… READ MORE
July 5th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Due to the holiday we’re taking a week off from the “Sketch o’the Week”. I lieu of that, I thought this illustration I did as a demo for an illustration workshop I taught back in 2020 was a suddenly relevant piece of art to share! It’s real watercolors and everything!! READ MORE
July 3rd, 2023 | Posted in General
May your 4th of July be filled with family, friends, fireworks, and plenty of propane! READ MORE
June 28th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
As promised (or threatened depending on your perspective) we are moving on to caricature sketches of classic 1970’s sitcom stars, starting with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman of “The Odd Couple”. I meant to mention with last week’s “Gilligan’s Island” sketch the timeless question that fans of that show have been asking themselves for decades… “Mary Ann or Ginger?” Well the Odd Couple has a similar conundrum… “Tony Randall/Jack Klugman or Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau?” Okay… not exactly the same connotations but the point is those are two distinct camps when it comes to fans of Felix and Oscar. Randall and Klugman played the duo in the long running TV series,… READ MORE
June 26th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Welcome to Monday, and another edition of the least inventive ongoing blog series ever, a chronological crawl through my work at MAD Magazine! Speaking of inventions, this week we look at another another uninventive TV show about inventors and investors, “Shark Tank”. It’s uninventive because it’s based on the Canadian show “Dragon’s Den” which is in turn a rip off the the Japanese show “Money Tigers”. This spoof was written by MAD‘s MADdest writer Dick DeBartolo and first appeared in MAD #529, Oct 2014. In a rare turn of events, I have a saved scan of the finished inks on this splash, before coloring… For… READ MORE
June 21st, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is this is the final sketch of my “TV shows Tom watched after school as a kid” series, which everyone must be bored out of their minds with by now. I have plum run out of shows I actually watched after school. I saved “Gilligan’s Island” for last for two reasons. First, it was the quintessential after school show for me. It seemed to be in endless syndication and was on every day on what appeared to be all channels, so I saw every episode multiple times over the years. Second, there are… READ MORE
June 19th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Welcome to another miserable Monday, and our continuing slog through the slimy, putrid, vermin-invested swamp that is my work for MAD Magazine. This week we return to the world of TV satires with this look back at MAD‘s spoof of the first season of “True Detective”… you know, back when the show was good and didn’t have completely indecipherable storylines, huge plot holes, and Vince Vaughn? This parody was written by the great Arnie Kogen, and first appeared in MAD #528, August 2014. This splash features a few cameos by MAD staffers. The photographer on the left is MAD associate art director Ryan Flanders, and… READ MORE
