This is the closest I’ve gotten to doing an actual MAD cover… the cover of a special Superman issue from 2013. Here are the roughs and some close ups of the city painting that took forever. READ MORE
In honor of the latest Pixar movie’s release, here’s a look at the story behind “Toyota Story”, which started out as a single image for the MAD website during the Toyota “unexplained acceleration” lawsuit and investigation, and ended up being used as part of a parody in MAD #504 back in 2010. The initial job was described to me as a fake poster for a “Toy Story” spin-off film, done in a typical Pixar look, with the gag being the toys behind the wheel of a runaway Toyota and several of them being run over and squashed. Naturally the effectiveness of the parody would rely… READ MORE
I know I’ve told this story before, but if someone was to ask me “what was the first piece you ever did for MAD?”, there are actually three answers. The first piece of art I ever had printed in MAD was a two pager called “Gadgets to Make Your Home Theater REALLY like the Movies” in MAD #399, October 2000. The first piece of art I ever did for them that they used for any reason was something called “Presidential Survivor”, and was used on the MAD website (back when they were first doing original content on it) in August 2000. My first official paid… READ MORE
Possibly the biggest highlight of a weekend full of highlights at the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Awards last week in D.C. was the bestowing of the NCS Medal of Honor to the incomparable Mort Drucker. Mort was the very first recipient of what is sure to become one of the most prestigious lifetime achievement awards in all of cartooning. Here’s the story: I just finished serving two terms (four years) as president of the NCS. Since I took office I have had multiple people come to me and ask why (insert name of legendary cartoonist) had not been honored with the NCS Milton Caniff Lifetime… READ MORE
Loot Crate is a grab bag (okay… grab BOX) program where you receive a box full of stuff every month for a subscription fee. It’s geared towards geeks and gamers, and each month the box has a “theme”. May 2015’s theme is “Unite”, and included in the box is a special edition of MAD exclusive to Loot Crate. I have yet to see an actual copy of this issue, so I am unsure how much of the content is reprint material and how much is original. As you can see the cover is an exclusive done by Mark Fredrickson, and I know it contains an… READ MORE
In comic book shops, on the iPad and in subscribers mailboxes now, on news stands everywhere tomorrow: Cover (Mark Fredrickson) “Weird AL” Welcome (Al Yankovic, Hermann Mejia) Letters and Tomatoes (Answered by Al Yankovic) The Fundalini Pages (Kenny Keil, Chris Houghton, John Kerschbaum, Joe Dator, Ward Sutton, Desmond Devlin, Kevin Pope, Dick DeBartolo, Teresa Burns Parkhurst) The Weird Al-ini Pages (Anton Emdin, Patton Oswald, Scott Bricher, Seth Green, Bob Staake, Chris Hardwicke, Kristen Schaal & Rich Blomquist, James Warhola, Emo Philips, Rick Tulka, Thomas Lennon, John Hodgman) Pages From Weird Al’s Notebook (Al Yankovic, Sam Sisco, Sam Viviano (uncredited)) Things You Never want to Learn… READ MORE
Because of the way movie distribution and longevity in the theaters had changed since the 20th century, the MAD movie parody became a lot harder to do. I wrote extensively about it here, but the short version is that even big money-making movies seldom spend more than four or five weeks in theaters these days, and by the time the movie parody comes out (usually a three month lag) the film it spoofed is old news. For a few years in the early-mid 2000’s, MAD tried to do movie parodies in advance of the film’s release. We worked from trailers, bootleg movie scripts, books/comics… READ MORE
Seeing as how Mort’s 86th birthday was yesterday, I thought today I would repost this story I originally blogged in 2006. It’s about how I ended up getting the incredible caricature of me you see above by the incomparable Mr. Drucker himself, and how that eventually led to my being in the National Cartoonists Society, working for MAD, and a whole lot of other wonderful things: Sept. 19, 2006: As I wrote last week, Saturday the 23rd was The Lovely Anna and my 18 year wedding anniversary. We had a lovely dinner in an excellent french restaurant in Minneapolis… it’s nice to be married to… READ MORE
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