Tom's Mad Blog
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
July 4th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday again, and that means it’s time for yet another exciting episode of our relentless crawl through my work at MAD magazine. This week we have a look at what might have been the smallest piece I ever had in the magazine. This was a spot feature that was part of “The Fundalini Pages”, which was a multiple page feature at the front of every issue from #438 to to the last NYC issue #550. The Fundalini Pages contained short features, multiple ones to a page, that were sometimes illustrated (like this one) and sometimes just copy. I only ever did two pieces for… READ MORE
June 29th, 2022 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
There have been a lot actors who have become iconic in the horror film world, but you would be hard pressed to name one who is more synonymous with the genre than the great Boris Karloff. His last film appearance was over fifty years ago, but he’s still the King of Horror, and he scared the hell out of audiences in the days where you couldn’t show blood or gore onscreen. READ MORE
June 27th, 2022 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Holy back from vacation, Batman! It’s the same bat-time on the same bat-channel as we return to our crusade of vengeance that is my work for MAD magazine. In this week’s episode we have a look at yet another super hero movie parody. This time it’s MAD‘s spoof of “The Dark Knight”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #495, Aug 2008. It’s no secret I am a big fan of Batman, so getting to do the art for the spoofs of the Christopher Nolan films was a treat for me. This parody also happens to include one of my… READ MORE
June 22nd, 2022 | Posted in General
No “Sketch o’the Week” this week because I am on a for real, actual vacation! However I am a guest this week on the “3 Point Perspective” podcast with illustrators Jake Parker and Will Terry this week. It’s a very different kind of discussion because they were most interested in the world of live caricature, so we talk a lot about that and only touch on MAD and other aspects of caricature illustration. The link will take you to a landing page with access to the YouTube or audio only versions of the podcast. Thanks Jake and Will for having me on the show! READ MORE
