Tom's Mad Blog
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
May 3rd, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Follow this link if you are interested in this original art Since his big brother Dick was out subject last week, It’s only fitting that we continue our series of classic sitcom sketches with Jerry Van Dyke from the ill-fated and infamous 1965 sitcom “My Mother the Car.” The sitcom’s premise revolved around a small town lawyer who buys an old, dilapidated car that turns out to be his dead mother reincarnated who talked to him through the car’s radio. That sounds ridiculous (and it is), but you need to remember at the time a lot of sitcoms were based on fantastical gimmicks like a talking horse,… READ MORE
May 1st, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday again… or IS it? You never really know what’s real and what’s not in the shadowy world of espionage, but regardless we are going to spy out this TV parody of the Showtime series “Homeland” from MAD #523, October 2013, written by MAD editor David Shayne. One thing I remember about doing this one was that that the MAD folks wanted me to put the spies from Spy vs. Spy in as many background cameos and gags as I could. I didn’t include them in the splash page in my initial rough so I added them in the final. They show up a… READ MORE
April 26th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is a repeat of one from a few years ago (The Lovely Anna and I were in Amsterdam last week)… although it still fits with our “classic TV Sitcoms” theme. Here’s Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke from “The Dick Van Dyke” show. Back in 2021 I did the art for a CNN docu-series called “History of the Sitcom”. That art featured about 40 characters from various sitcoms… but not “The Dick Van Dyke” show. I was berated by many people for “not including” it in the art. This was, of course, coming from a bunch of idiots who immediately got… READ MORE
April 24th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Goblins, Wargs, and Dwarves… oh my! It’s a Middle-Earth Monday as we continue our journey along the paths through the Mirkwood that was my work for MAD Magazine. That trip seems short compared to the long, drawn out, padded three movie trek to the Lonely Mountain that only took one book to accomplish! This was the parody for the first of “The Hobbit” trilogy movies “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appeared in MAD #522, September 2013. Due to the odd nature of the splash with the map and overlaying insets I didn’t do the inked text… READ MORE
April 19th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Just when I think I’ve run out of old TV sitcoms I used to watch after school as a kid, I remember another one! How could I forget “The Beverly Hillbillies”, which was a show that actually holds up pretty well when watching even today. On the surface it makes fun of stereotypes of back-woods country folks as being dumb and unsophisticated, but it actually conveys the message that living a simple and uncomplicated life and being happy is all anyone needs. In fact, the Clampetts proved many times on the show that there is a lot of wisdom in their way of life, and… READ MORE
