Tom's Mad Blog
October 20th, 2020 | Posted in General
Since Des Devlin and my book project CLAPTRAP is successfully funded, the next thing we’re apparently supposed to do is set some “Stretch Goals”. These are higher funding goals that, if reached, means we add or do more stuff for the book. The great thing about stretch goals is that if you are already one of those special people who have contributed to the book, you will benefit from our reaching these goals without doing anything at all! Well, that’s not exactly true. What we need our backers to do is continue to share our campaign far and wide, so it gets in front of… READ MORE
October 19th, 2020 | Posted in Monday MADness
This was one of my favorite movie parodies from the short lived “Burbank MAD” era, written by my CLAPTRAP collaborator Desmond Devlin! READ MORE
October 18th, 2020 | Posted in General
Q: How did you first get into MAD? A: I used about 60 feet of rope, a glass cutter, and a crowbar. Just kidding, my road getting into MAD was both a long and a short one. It was long when you consider the time between my first showing my work to a MAD editor and when I got my first assignment (about 10 years), and short if you consider how quickly I ended up with that first assignment after really getting serious about pursuing work with the magazine. Like many American boys I had a time when I was really “into” MAD Magazine. This… READ MORE
October 16th, 2020 | Posted in News
Another thing I did for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival this past weekend was a one hour(ish) virtual mini-workshop. For anyone interested in my upcoming online multi-video caricature workshop, this is a little peek at some of what that will be all about. NOTE: This is NOT one of the actual videos from my virtual workshop. Those are still in the works and will be professionally shot and edited, multi-camera videos. This was a live, Zoom-based event. You can watch it here: READ MORE
October 15th, 2020 | Posted in General
This past weekend I took part in the Lakes International Comic Art Festival based in Kendall, UK. Like everything else on Planet Earth these days, it was held online rather than in person. That didn’t stop it from being fascinating and a lot of fun. In fact they did a fantastic job with the online experience. One of the events I participated in was a “Pass the Panel” collaborative comic, where 16 different comics artists were challenged to draw a page on an ongoing comics story. The idea is that the first artist (in this case Luke McGarry) draws a page starting a story, and… READ MORE
October 14th, 2020 | Posted in Daily Coronacature
This one is actually part of one of my “Virtual NYCC Artist’s Alley” commissions, so done in a “live caricature” technique. READ MORE
October 13th, 2020 | Posted in Freelancing
I did another Halloween themed piece for Ranger Rick magazine this year, this one is about “not so scary animals”. The idea was to depict a haunted house with windows showing various animals that are considered “scary” but with facts showing they actually have endearing some qualities. The big blank areas in the image is where text boxes with the animal facts were to be placed. READ MORE
October 12th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Exactly 20 years ago this week, MAD #399 hit newsstands (for you kids out there a “newsstand” was a place where people bought magazines, newspapers, and chewing gum). Pages 30 and 31 of that issue featured my first printed piece in MAD, pictured above. It was written by MAD‘s MADDEST WRITER Dick DeBartolo. We threw a MAD party at our house. I was 34 years old and my youngest kid was 4. Today he is 24, a college graduate, homeowner, and currently on his honeymoon. Time flies. I still have both the rough pencil sketch and the original inks from this job: READ MORE
