Tom's Mad Blog
September 7th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s subject was suggested by my youngest daughter, Gabrielle. At 28, she’s a well known DJ in the Orlando area, and if you attend any big comic cons like New York Comic Con, C2E2, Emerald City Con and many more you’ve probably seen her rockin’ the joint as “Atomic Blonde”. You can follow her via her website or on Twitter or Instagram. She knows music, and Joseph Quinn‘s metalhead character Eddie Munson from the latest season of “Stranger Things” is a favorite of her’s… and of many fans of the show. READ MORE
September 6th, 2022 | Posted in General
The pages of MAD Magazine has been graced by the work of some of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium… and that is not hyperbole. Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Will Elder, Mort Drucker, Paul Coker, Antonio Prohias, Don Martin… the list keeps going. Perhaps the greatest pure cartoonist of them all turns 85 today! The incomparable Sergio Aragonés started with MAD in 1963 at age 26. He would go on to become one of the most prolific members of the Usual Gang of Idiots (second only to Jaffee, actually), appearing in (as of this writing) 501 issues (there… READ MORE
September 5th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s “Happy Hour” somewhere in the world, even on a Monday, so let’s crack a brewski and have a look at another of the skunky and flat pours I did for MAD Magazine. This week we chug another cold one from the annual “MAD’s Twenty Dumbest People, Events and Things” feature, this time from the year 2009. This pint of suds first appeared in MAD #502, Jan 2010, writer uncredited. The subject was the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Sgt. James Crowley for trying to break into his own house. After an escalating media fight with accusations of racial profiling, harsh comments from Obama that were then… READ MORE
August 31st, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Original sketch available in the Studio Store I know what you are thinking… who the %$%#% is Richard Benjamin Harrison?!? Well, you’d have to be familiar with the TV show “Pawn Stars” to recognize him. He was the patriarch of the family that owns the titular pawn shop from the show, and was affectionately (or maybe not so affectionately) known and “The Old Man”. He passed away in 2018. I ran across this sketch in an old sketchbook recently and thought I’d share it here thus copping out on a new sketch this week! Fa fa fa! READ MORE
August 29th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
WOOF ARF WOOF WOOF ARF! * *Translation: It’s Monday already?? Yes it is, and that means another barking mad episode of our look back at my work for MAD Magazine! We are now at the 6th issue of what would be my record of appearing in 71 consecutive issues of MAD… but frankly my appearance in MAD #501 (Oct 2009), was a bit of a cheat. The “article” my work was in was called “Excerpts from Bo Confidential- The Secret Files of America’s First Dog“, and was basically a three page advertisement for the book I did with the MAD staff just a few months… READ MORE
August 24th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Oh, SANDY! I was sad to hear of the passing of the charming Olivia Newton-John at the too-early age of 73 a week or so ago. My sister Tami was a HUGE fan of the movie “Grease” back in the late 70’s so I saw a lot of Olivia through osmosis back in grade school. How could you not love that movie? Olivia was a wonderful talent and of course did a lot more than just “Grease”, but that’s the part I’ll always remember her in. It occurred to me after I had three daughters that the MAD parody of “Grease” got it right and the ending… READ MORE
August 22nd, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
We interrupt the usual self-deprecation and smartassery that permeates these posts to revisit a moment that was a major milestone for MAD Magazine, both is a positive and negative sense. April of 2009 saw the release of the 500th issue of MAD. That issue was the culmination of 57 years of idiocy, and the 500th issue was a tribute to the artists and writers who filled all those pages over the decades. No. 500 saw the return of many of the Usual Gang of Idiots who had not had anything in the magazine in years, albeit in cameo appearances. I did a spot illustration for… READ MORE
August 17th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
A week or so ago my pal Joey Paskevicius posted this picture he had found on Facebook of the amazing Giancarlo Esposito striking an awesome “Gus Fring” pose while holding a MAD sketchcover commission I had done featuring him a few years ago: I did that sketchcover during my first ever “virtual” artists alley event back in 2020 for a gentleman named Tim Dunakin. That’s Tim looking on in the background. Tim brought that cover sketch to a recent comic con to get Giancarlo to sign in, and this picture was taken by Giancarlo’s handlers and posted on Giancarlo’s facebook page. Not only is this… READ MORE
