Tom's Mad Blog
April 19th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another installment of our ridiculous chronological crawl through my work in MAD! We return to the world of superhero movie spoofs with this parody of the film “X2”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and appearing in MAD #430, June 2003. The movie debuted in theaters on May 2, 2003, so we actually had the parody out BEFORE the film, since this issue was on news stand in mid April. Are we clairvoyant? Is Desmond a Time Lord? Did we use MAD Magazine’s tremendous clout in the world of entertainment to see an advanced release of the film? Nope, nope, and MAD has… READ MORE
April 18th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Knowing that “Chicken Fat” will eventually be in a satire you do, which comes first in the drawing process, the main characters or the chicken fat stuff? How do you determine how much space is needed for the chicken fat? A: For those who don’t know what the “Chicken Fat” our questioner is referring to is, here’s a definition: “Chicken Fat” is a term coined by Will Elder, one of MAD‘s original “Usual Gang of Idiots”, for the background gags and extra visual jokes stuffed into the panels of a MAD Magazine parody. It meant visual jokes and gags added for “extra flavor” to… READ MORE
April 16th, 2021 | Posted in General
Here’s another drawing from my “Virtual Artist’s Alley” event late last month, iconic bad guy actor Lee Van Cleef! This was one of the “Live Caricature Style” commissions, meaning it’s drawn in the same way and with the same graphite and blending stomp tools I use when I do live caricatures. For those who placed commission orders with me when I did that virtual Artist’s Alley last month, I’ll have to ask you for a little extra patience in waiting for your art. Right after I did that event I got slammed with multiple freelance jobs, with more rolling in. That means a lot of… READ MORE
April 16th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Mental Floss posted this video about the history of MAD magazine a couple weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to link to it but I keep forgetting. Today I remembered. While it’s only 15 minutes, the video does a pretty good job of covering the origins of MAD. They are also more accurate about the details than many longer stories from bigger sources. Certainly they deserve kudos for getting the history right concerning MAD’s switch to a magazine format. So many other media stories about MAD assumes they switched to avoid the Comics Code Authority because it happened around the same time, when that was just… READ MORE
April 15th, 2021 | Posted in General
This is an interesting article about a lawsuit filed back in the 1980’s by the Anheuser-Busch beer company against the creators/publishers of a St. Louis based humor magazine very much in the MAD vien called Snicker. Snicker ran a parody ad on the back of one of their issues poking fun at Anheuser-Busch’s “Michelob Dry” beer ads with a “Michelob Oily” spoof ad. This was also a callout to a the 1988 Shell Oil Co. oil leak in Vienna, Missouri that sent millions of gallons of oil into a local river. The leak caused several Anheuser-Busch factories to have to halt production due to possible… READ MORE
April 14th, 2021 | Posted in General
My freelancing workload just went from Mach 2 to Warp 7, so I am taking the month of April off of doing a “Sketch o’the Week”. Instead on Wednesdays I’ll post one of the commission pieces I have done from my “Virtual Artist’s Alley”‘ event late last month. I got some very fun requests. This is one of the “Mock MAD Cover” commissions I did. You’d have to be familiar with the movie “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” to get it. Brush pen and Copic markers on 9×12 bristol. READ MORE
April 14th, 2021 | Posted in News
I’ve done a number of podcast interviews in the last year or two, but this one is definitely a favorite. From the Middle is a “comedy, entertainment, and culture podcast” hosted by Kory and Dillon Hubbell and Kendall Eilola. There are a lot of those types of podcasts, but Kory told me that they made an effort to ask questions of guests that are not your typical type of questions… and he was right. At no point to they ask what pen nib I use. We talk about family, the comics and illustration industry, making a living as a cartoonist in the 21st century, and… READ MORE
April 13th, 2021 | Posted in General
Every Tuesday we post an update on the CLAPTRAP Indiegogo “Indemand” store site. This week’s update is a 15 minute video of me inking on one of the panels from our parody of “The Shawshank Redemption”, while talking a bit about the process. Here it is: If you have not pre-ordered a copy of the book yet, you can do so here. READ MORE
