Tom's Mad Blog
February 8th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Here we go with our newest sketch series entitled “TV shows Tom watched after school as a kid”. This week we visit Stalag 13 and everybody’s favorite lovable looney Nazis! This might be the most unlikely sitcom in the history of TV, and that includes all those starring an unattractive male comedian who somehow had a super hot wife. “Hogan’s Heroes” a COMEDY set in a World War II nazi prisoner of war camp. The nazi’s were all incompetent idiots and the camp was a cover for a covert Allied special ops team that did all manner of espionage, sabotage and resistance assistance. Our sketch… READ MORE
February 6th, 2023 | Posted in General
I knew I shoulda turned left at Albequerque! Welcome to another miserable MAD Monday, where we continue our decent into the drug-addled abyss that was my work for MAD Magazine. When you think about it, this whole look back at my MAD work is a little like meth… it makes you sick and you don’t want to keep doing it but now that we’ve started we just can’t stop! This week we take a look at one of my favorite pieces I did for the magazine. One of the questions I get asked a lot is “is it easier to do a spoof of a… READ MORE
February 1st, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
After last week’s sketch of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams from the recent TV show “Wednesday”, I was waxing nostalgic about the original 60’s “The Addam’s Family” show. I really loved watching the reruns of that show on TV as a kid, which were a staple of after school TV along with “The Munsters”, “Gilligan’s Island” and a lot of other half hour sitcoms. So, I could not resist doing a sketch of the original TV Gomez and Morticia, John Astin and Carolyn Jones. That got me thinking it would be fun to do a series of caricatures from other TV shows I watched after school as a kid! Most… READ MORE
January 30th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
If Monday’s seem like a bleak and barren wasteland of tedium seeming to stretch ahead forever, then this post fits right in! It’s time for another dystopian dive into the dreary dregs of drawing that was my work for MAD Magazine… and the odds are forever NOT in your favor! Yes, you are the tribute sentenced to having to look back at my artwork for MAD‘s spoof of the film “The Hunger Games”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #515, June 2012. I don’t have a lot to say about this job other than I sort of liked the… READ MORE
January 25th, 2023 | Posted in General
The Lovely Anna and I finally watched the last of the new “Wednesday” show on Netflix staring the perfectly cast Jenna Ortega as the titular character. We enjoyed it quite a bit. Tim Burton did a great job reimagining Charles Addams‘s characters and world for the show. Those people who complain that the show was too dark and that Burton “didn’t understand the characters” are mistaking this as a reboot of the 60’s TV show. It’s not. “Wednesday” is based on original Charles Addams cartoons. Same source material as the 60’s show, but a different take. In fact, Burton was far more true to the characters and the cartoon vibe than… READ MORE
January 23rd, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s yet another Monday, and that means yet another big, fat look back at my work for MAD magazine. This week we go dough-nuts with a peek at MAD‘s parody of the heavy-duty sitcom “Mike & Molly”, written by Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #514, April 2012. Very few jobs I was given by MAD made me unhappy, but this one did. I have to say I was not much of a fan of this show, or this spoof. Both were filled with a lot of cheap fat jokes, most of which come off as mean as opposed to funny. I tried to… READ MORE
January 18th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I was never much of a “Trekkie” back in the day, but I did appreciate Star Trek and loved the original series as well as “The Next Generation” TV shows. I recognized how much of an impact Star Trek had on Science Fiction as a genre, and the shows were entertaining as well as thought provoking. My favorite character was always Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy, played in the OS by DeForest Kelley. As an aside, most people know the often-repeated Captain Kirk line “Beam me up, Scotty!” Was never actually uttered in the series. Just a common misused “quote”. Well, the “Dammit, Jim… I’m a doctor… READ MORE
January 16th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
By Oa, It takes a lot of willpower to keep doing these lame looks back at my work for MAD Magazine, but Mondays are already the worst day of the week so let’s just roll with it. This week we have a peek at another “MAD’s 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of…” the year, this time 2011. That was the year Charlie Sheen went crazy, getting booted off his hit TV show “Two and a Half Men” and raving about tiger blood, wizards, and “winning” while looking more and more like a crackhead. MAD took notice and he made the MAD 20 with this… READ MORE
