Tom's Mad Blog
February 18th, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
I did this spot illustration for Scholastic back in 2007. I can’t remember what the feature was or what it was about, but it’s the four stars of “High School Musical”, Corbin Bleu, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale and Zac Efron. READ MORE
February 17th, 2021 | Posted in Classic Rock Sketch Series
Here’s my sketch of the immortal Tina Turner, which I guess is not just for “The Daily Coronacature” or a “Sketch o’the Week”, but part of my “Classic Rock” series also… a three-fer! Original sketch is available in the Studio Store as usual. This drawing is a good example of how a subject’s “physicality” can be an important part of their caricature. Tina of course has the massive hair, squinty eyes, big cheeks, etc, but she’s as much known for her dancing/poses and long legs when she performs. In fact, she has wide hips and kind of a thick waist that makes her torso seem… READ MORE
February 16th, 2021 | Posted in General
This week’s CLAPTRAP update is a video “behind the scenes” look at the creation of Des and my splash page for our parody of “Goodfellas” that we shared a few weeks ago. Enjoy: READ MORE
February 15th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
My next assignment for MAD appeared in issue #416, May 2002. It was a return to a sports-themed feature called “Their Team…& Your Team…” written by John Prete. I started for MAD at almost exactly the time it switched to a color format. In fact a big part of why I started getting work from them was that they were planning the switch to color and I did my own digital coloring. In the 20 years I did work for the magazine, I only ever did four jobs in black and white. This was one of them. This was, however, the first black and white… READ MORE
February 14th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Q: This question is prompted by your recent Care Bears post … I haven’t seen you talk in your blog before about pitching your own ideas to MAD. Did you do this often, and did many get picked up? A: Actually that may have been my first and last pitch for a completely independent piece for MAD. I do not remember ever doing that before or since. It never really occurred to me to even try pitching my own features or gag ideas to them, because I was usually very busy doing the art for features they assigned to me that others wrote. I regularly… READ MORE
February 13th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I got this question via DM recently: Hi Tom, are issues #9 and #10 the last official MAD Magazine issues before things changed? MAD has undergone a LOT of changes in the last 3 years, and there has been a lot of confusion about things because their parent company hasn’t been very clear about what is happening, and certainly not about WHY things are happening. In response to this I put together a little timeline of the what and whens of recent changes to MAD: October 2013– DC Comics announces they are closing their New York offices and moving them to the Warner Bros complex in Burbank, CA. MAD‘s… READ MORE
February 12th, 2021 | Posted in News
Yesterday my pal and writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier shared the not exactly unexpected news that the Wondercon 2021 comic convention will not take place as a live three day event in Anaheim CA as previously scheduled March 26-28th, but will be a two day virtual event instead on Friday and Saturday, March 26 and 27, 2021. Again, not exactly a shocker, but I believe this will be the first major comic book convention that has seen its in-person event cancelled TWICE since the pandemic began. I fear it won’t be the last. I would have attended Wondercon as I usually do, so I am planning… READ MORE
February 11th, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
I did this back in 2016 after “Superman v Batman” Dawn of Justice” came out… just for fun. It was a satirical commentary on how director Zack Snyder can take all the fun and joy out of virtually anything. I pitched it to MAD for the Fundalini Pages but they didn’t go for it, so I just posted in online. Here it is again about 5 years later, with an update! READ MORE