Tom's Mad Blog
June 1st, 2023 | Posted in General
My 2023 lineup of caricature workshops only have a handful of spots left! If you have been considering taking one of my weekend long classes, don’t wait too much longer! Minnesota and Orlando have been sold out for weeks. Denver had been sold out for weeks until this morning, when one spot opened up due to a cancellation and a depleted waitlist. There are a few spots left in Dublin and San Fransisco, but that’s it! Book a spot soon before they are all sold out: READ MORE
May 31st, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I have to admit I saw very few episodes of “F Troop” in syndication as a kid. It just wasn’t a show my local stations carried in the hours immediately after school when I watched TV. The few episodes I did see were mainly when I was home sick from school, and caught many old syndicated shows on during the day. My mom would put me in front of our TV on the couch, bundled up in blankets and sipping soup out of a thermos while she worked, and I’d veg out watching old shows. I remember F Troop being very reliant on slapstick/physical humor.… READ MORE
May 24th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
A very old joke… Ward and June Cleaver are at the breakfast table. “Ward?” “Yes, Dear?” “I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night.” “Leave it to Beaver” was a show I sometimes watched after school, although it wasn’t often showing in syndication on my local channels. It’s a classic so I think it needed to be representing in our “Classic Sitcom” series. So, here’s a sketch of Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers as Wally and Beaver Cleaver. READ MORE
May 22nd, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday, and you know what that means! Yes, for most people it means you had to get up and go to work… but that’s the good news! The bad news is that it’s time for yet another sickening look back at my work for MAD Magazine. This week we have a peek at the second piece I had in MAD #525 (Feb 2014), a parody of the TV show “The Following”, written by the great Arnie Kogen. As I foreshadowed last week, with this particular assignment I tried something different I had never attempted before. So what was this experimental technique I tried, and why… READ MORE
May 17th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly… even a ridiculous sketch like this! We continue our series of caricatures from classic sitcoms with Sally Field as Sister Bertrille AKA “The Flying Nun!” This was another of the run of shows in the 60’s that featured some kind of fantastical gimmick like witchcraft, genies, monsters, etc… in this case a young, 90 pound sister in a convent in Puerto Rico that can fly via strong winds and her starched coronet. Field famously hated the part and her experience doing the show. She was pregnant in the third and final season, and considered… READ MORE
May 15th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Welcome to Monday, and another nauseatingly nostalgic look back at my work for MAD magazine! Nostalgic? Seems like current events to me! French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once wrote “the more things change the more they stay the same”… or maybe that was Jon Bon Jovi. Anyway this piece was part of MAD‘s “Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2013” from MAD #525. Written by Jay Rath. This was 2013, and here we are in 2023 looking at the same garbage on Capitol Hill. Poor Rick Meyerowitz… his classic illustration for the Animal House movie poster might be the most parodied movie poster ever. MAD got in on the action with this… READ MORE
May 10th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Ooh! Ooh! It’s Wednesday, and it’s time for another “Sketch o’the Week!”. After last week’s sketch was from a TV show about a car, I had to continue the trend with another sketch from a show about a car… except this time I skipped drawing the car! “Car 54, Where are You?” is another of those beloved sitcoms from the 1960’s that are cult classics thanks to sixty years of syndication. The adventures of New York officers Toody and Muldoon, as portrayed by Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne, still has a lot of fans today. I was chatting with writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier the… READ MORE
May 8th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Look, Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… MONDAY! That means it’s time to upend truth, justice, and the American Way with another look at the alien life form that was my work for MAD Magazine! This week we have a look back at MAD‘s parody of the movie “Man of Steel”, written by my claptrap co-hort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #524, December 2013. I don’t have much in the way of backstory for this job. It was just the usual rigamarole. I do remember having a lot of fun drawing Michael Shannon as General Zod. There is… READ MORE
