Tom's Mad Blog
September 3rd, 2021 | Posted in General
If you haven’t read any of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier‘s “Groo the Wanderer” comics, then you are missing out on on one of the greatest humorous comics ever created, and that is most definitely NOT hyperbole. Groo’s been around for over 40 years, and his adventures have been published by five differents labels over the decades, currently Dark Horse Comics. There are a LOT of Groo comics out there, including a 120 issue run published by Marvel/Epic from 1985-1995, and many, many multiple issue mini-series. Fortunately they are all enjoyable stories in themselves so you need not start at his first appearance. In fact,… READ MORE
September 2nd, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
If you do freelance illustration long enough and for enough different clients, you eventually come across some piece you did where you cannot remember the client or the purpose of the illustration! This is one of those. I know I did it in 2010 because that’s the date on the digital file, but I cannot remember who or what it was for. I dimly remember it being for some kind of conservative political group’s internal media use. Anyway it was supposed to be an illustration of then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, depicting him as a big spender. I did a number of rough concept… READ MORE
September 1st, 2021 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I’m old enough to remember both “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Lou Grant” when they were originally aired on TV. I was a bit young to watch MTMS (I was 11 during its last season) but my parents watched it so I saw it through osmosis. “Lou Grant” aired when I was in junior high and my first few years in high school. The thing I remembered most about “Lou Grant” was my initial confusion as to how the same character went from being in a comedy to a drama. I expected to see Lou as the comedic character, but in this new show… READ MORE
August 31st, 2021 | Posted in General
I had a lot of fun doing that illustration for CNN’s “History of the Sitcom” series, but one of the disappointing things about doing it was all the great characters we had to leave out. Not just the many shows that were not represented at all in the art, but important characters from depicted shows that weren’t included. In order to represent as many shows as possible, they had me only draw a few characters from each show. For the most part it worked. For example, only drawing Jimmy Walker and Esther Rolle from “Good Times” left out some other great main actors from the… READ MORE
August 30th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42… do you remember the significance of these mystery numbers from the mid-late 2000’s hit TV series “LOST”? No? That’s okay, neither does anyone else. No doubt not too many people remember the MAD parody either, but MAD‘s Maddest writer Dick Debartolo and I spoofed the show in MAD #453, May 2005. I recall this splash page being particularly fun to do. Not only are all the word boxes jumbled about as opposed to the strict horizontal layout that MAD usually employs, but showing the cast in mid-crash of the plane was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately in… READ MORE
August 29th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: If a client just has a low budget, do you sometimes offer to draw with a “lower” quality? I mean, are you maybe accepting a lower wage, if you can in return reduce the amount of work like maybe fewer sketches or less worked out coloring? A: No. I would not intentionally do something with less effort or lesser quality in order to justify accepting a lower rate. If what a client wants me to do and what they are offering to pay for it don’t equate, I just won’t accept the job. My name is still on the art, and I don’t want… READ MORE
August 26th, 2021 | Posted in Freelancing
Well actually this is yet another of the roughly gajillion “workplace” poster I did for the Marlin Company from 2001 to early 2017. I think the message here was supposed to be about teamwork. READ MORE
August 25th, 2021 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I had to draw rock legend Charlie Watts for the “Sketch o’the Week” after he passed away yesterday at age 80. What an amazing legacy he left behind. I was never a Rolling Stones fanatic but I’ve always been a rock fan, and you can’t love rock and roll and not appreciate how great the Stones are. RIP. READ MORE
