Tom's Mad Blog
July 29th, 2022 | Posted in News
The world lost another of the Usual Gang of Idiots recently with the passing of the wonderful Paul Coker Jr. on July 23rd at age 93. Paul was, at least in my opinion, a seriously underrated member of the UGOI. His work was elegant and beautifully drawn, and yet was as forcefully funny as anything else you saw in MAD. His “Horrifying Cliches” was a long running favorite feature in the magazine and what he is probably best known for, but he illustrated hundreds and hundreds of other features that showed the versatility of his unique style. Paul even did a number of TV and… READ MORE
July 27th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
HEEEEEEERE’S JOHNNY! We continue our horror film series with Shelley Duvall in her iconic role as Wendy Torrence in Stanley Kubrick‘s masterpiece “The Shining”. I considered drawing Shelley as her character from an even scarier film, “Olive Oil” in “Popeye”, but went with her Wendy. Jokes aside, I think “Popeye” gets a bad rap. It’s actually a great film that just ran out of money and steam at the end. I consider “The Shining” the perfect example of how different film and books are as storytelling mediums. Stephen King, who wrote the novel that the film is based on, famously hates Kubrick’s movie. Despite being a HUGE fan of… READ MORE
July 26th, 2022 | Posted in General
I’m trying to catch up after San Diego Comic Con last week, so in lieu of a MADness of the week here’s a look at some panels from Desmond Devlin and my upcoming book of all new movie parodies, CLAPTRAP. If you are already a backer, you’ll have seen these on a recent update, but I thought I’d share them here. See if you can identify the movies they are spoofing… none of which were ever spoofed in MAD. We are going to be about a year late delivering the book, but in our defense we are doing two parodies more than we originally planned,… READ MORE
July 20th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Who’s laughing now? Hopefully you are at this chin-tasitc caricature of the groovy Bruce Campbell in his role as Ash from the “Evil Dead” film series. I have to admit I have only ever seen the first “Evil Dead” and that was a LOOOOONG time ago, but Mr. Campbell is a pop culture phenomenon from the horror movie world and so many people love the “Evil Dead” movies I figured he’d be a good subject. READ MORE
July 18th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
What?!? It’s Monday AGAIN? Time for another installment of our chronological trip through the bankrupt mess that is my work for MAD Magazine! This week we have a look at another piece from “The MAD 20” aka “MAD‘s 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things: of the year. The year was 2008, and as usual there was no shortage of dumb things to make fun of. This piece appeared in MAD #497, Jan 2009. It’s a commentary on the government bailout of the big banks after the mortgage implosion crisis. The concept was to spoof of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” but with Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson,… READ MORE
July 13th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’ve always been a big fan of Stephen King‘s books, and while some of the adaptations for movies and TV haven’t hit the mark there are a few that are really good. The 1976 film “Carrie” might be the best of them in terms of both being faithful to the book and being a great film. I’ve drawn Sissy Spacek in her classic bloody, wide-eyed pose as a background cameo in a few movie spoofs, but never as a full blown sketch. Certainly one of the great horror movie moments of all time. READ MORE
July 11th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday! That means another trip to the Dark Side as we continue our weekly revisiting of my work at MAD Magazine and, as is the case today, its related publications like the short lived MAD KIDS. Today we have a look at my second cover for that “junior” version of MAD… this time for a Thanksgiving issue with a “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” theme for MAD KIDS #13, Dec 2008. This job was unique in that I was being asked to tray and ape the look and feel of the art style of the “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” movie and animated series.… READ MORE
July 6th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Mother? It’s another classic horror icon subject for this week’s sketch… Anthony Perkins in his role as Norman Bates from the Alfred Hitchcock 1960 masterpiece “Psycho”! There are a lot of interesting facts about this film, here’s I few I learned about when researching the movie for the parody Desmond Devlin and I are doing in our CLAPTRAP book: Despite Hitchcock’s fame and the commercial success of his previous films, Paramount did not want to back “Psycho”, considering it to be a “sleazy horror movie”. As a result, Hitchcock had a shoestring budget to work with and was deferred a lot of the rights to the film. That’s why he shot it… READ MORE
