Monday MADness
July 27th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Back in the fall of 2000 MAD published issue #400, which was a special full color issue on nice paper stock. I had just had my first piece appear in the issue before, and I was surprised to get any assignment for such a big milestone issue. One of the features was called “The Untold History of MAD” which was a sort of timeline with gags from the magazine’s long life. I was one of the artists who did some “covers we didn’t use” from each decade. These printed really small in the magazine. These were described as a double cover issue printed the morning… READ MORE
July 20th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Today’s Monday MADness is a look back at a three pager Desmond Devlin and I did for MAD #504, August 2010. Back then Toyota was in some hot water for an “unexplained acceleration” issue with their card that resulted in a lawsuit and investigation. This was a play on that with the Toy Story gang. Originally I just did a movie poster spoof that was a little different than the above for the MAD website, but then they expanded it into a short story for the actual magazine. Trying to get the look of the Pixar characters was time consuming. I went straight from pencils… READ MORE
July 13th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This week’s Monday MADness is a look at the complete parody of “The Wizard of Oz” from MAD #505, Oct. 2010, written by Desmond Devlin. with the increasingly poisonous partisan dialogues of the political talking heads of the time as a target (little did we know). This was a really fun but exhausting one to work on, considering I needed to do caricatures of dozens of political pundits as either munchkins or other characters. It’s always challenging to try and incorporate both a caricature likeness and some other recognizable visual identity like the Tin Man, Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion into the same character. Here… READ MORE
July 6th, 2020 | Posted in Monday MADness
Back in 2016 MAD started producing a series of parodies of children’s books starting with Goodnight Batcave (spoofing the beloved Margaret Wise Brown/Clement Hurd classic Goodnight Moon) written by MAD editor Dave Croatto with art by me. We followed that in 2017 with Superman and and the Miserable, Rotten, No Fun, Really Bad Day, also written by Dave with art by me, and in 2018 with Don’t Let the Penguin Drive the Batmobile, this time penned by another MAD editor, Jacob Lambert, and again with art by yours truly. Shortly after MAD moved to Burbank in early 2018, we actually pitched another kids book parody… READ MORE
June 29th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
MAD #14, the Al Jaffee tribute issue, dropped last week… if you can find a place to buy it that is. Almost all the material inside is either reprinted work done by Al, written by Al and drawn by another artist, drawn by Al and written by another writer, or new pieces done as an homage to Al and Al inspired features. Here’s the contents: Cover (Writer: Al Jaffee, Artist: Sam Viviano) Interior Cover (Al Jaffee) Stinky Old Miner’s Feet* (Dave Manak, Al Jaffee) MAD #214, Apr 1980 The Space Age Razor Race* (Al Jaffee, Idea: John Wick.. not that John Wick) MAD #208, July 1979 MAD’s Amazing Two-In-One Products (Kerry Callen) … READ MORE
March 16th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
A few years ago DC had artists for MAD do a series of “variant” covers for some of their titles for the April issue (April Fools Day… get it??) I did the above for Detective Comics #19 in 2013 and the one below for Batman-Superman #10 the next year. It’s the closest I ever got to doing an actual Batman comic book. READ MORE
March 2nd, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This was one of my favorite TV parodies I ever did for MAD… Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” from MAD #530 Dec, 2014, written by Desmond Devlin. The parody opened with a single page “splash” with three of the main characters (see below), but then opened up into the two page spread you see above. This show was loaded with great characters and great faces. READ MORE
February 24th, 2020 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Well, the new MAD era has begun in earnest. MAD #12 appeared in comic book shops last week. This issue is the first with the full-blown “mostly classic content with some new content” mix we’ve been told was coming. What we see is probably pretty indicative of what we can expect going forward… themed issues with about 20% new material, and 80% classic content with some colorizing here and there. What is reader reaction? Outrage? Sounding the death knell? Mass revolt that MAD is no longer focused on skewering the current world around us and instead is focused mostly on nostalgia/the past? Almost none of… READ MORE
