Tom’s MADness!
August 30th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42… do you remember the significance of these mystery numbers from the mid-late 2000’s hit TV series “LOST”? No? That’s okay, neither does anyone else. No doubt not too many people remember the MAD parody either, but MAD‘s Maddest writer Dick Debartolo and I spoofed the show in MAD #453, May 2005. I recall this splash page being particularly fun to do. Not only are all the word boxes jumbled about as opposed to the strict horizontal layout that MAD usually employs, but showing the cast in mid-crash of the plane was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately in… READ MORE
August 23rd, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday! That means it’s time to deal out another look back at my work for MAD Magazine, and this hand is definitely a 7-2 off suit. Today we have a look at “A MAD Peek Behind the Scenes at Celebrity Poker Showdown”, which took not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR people to write… Desmond Devlin, Steve Rosso, John Caldwell and David Shayne, and appearing in MAD #452, April 2005! Honestly, not my favorite MAD job. Not that it wasn’t funny, I just don’t give a &*%$ about poker, and find it all extremely boring. I don’t know anything about it, and… READ MORE
August 16th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As if Monday’s weren’t bad enough, it’s time for another nauseating look back at my furshlugginer work for MAD Magazine! Today’s episode is another MAD TV show parody, spoofing “Two and a Half Men”, written by the great Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #450, February 2005. This parody was done when the show was hugely popular and before star Charlie Sheen went off the deep end, which is why you’ll find no references to tiger’s blood, warlocks, “winning”, or general delusion. I cannot remember if I was in a real hurry on this one due to a tight deadline, but the pencil roughs… READ MORE
August 9th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Hold on to your warrants, boys and girls! It’s time for yet another episode of a look back at my twenty years of art for MAD Magazine… DUN DUN! This week we take a look back at MAD‘s spoof of one of the roughly two dozen “Law and Order” spin-offs, “Law and Order” Criminal Intent”, written by MAD‘s Maddest writer Dick Debartolo and first appearing in MAD #449, January 2005. Sadly the pencil roughs for this one are lost, but I do have scans of the inks! Clicky any to embiggen. This was and remains one of my favorite TV parodies I ever did for… READ MORE
August 2nd, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday! That means another step on our excruciatingly slow creep through my work at MAD magazine! This week we have a look at MAD‘s parody of “The Bernie Mac Show”, written by MAD editor David Shayne and first appearing in MAD #447, November 2004. I still have the pencil roughs of this one. This was one of those show I had never seen any episodes of, and it was WAY before streaming and on-demand was a thing, so I had to set me DVR (THAT was a thing then) to record some episodes to do my research. Fortunately it had been on a few… READ MORE
July 26th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
We continue our relentless crawl through my work at MAD Magazine with yet another Spider-Man movie parody… this time it’s “Spider-Man 2” again written by Dick DeBartolo and first appearing in MAD #446, October 2004. This particular parody is rare in that for some reason I scanned in ALL the final pencils and saved those files. Since I have no “roughs” from this job, I have to assume I skipped that step and went right to the final pencils to show MAD for approval. I don’t remember why, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’ll post the full pencils after the regular… READ MORE
July 19th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I know you have all been waiting with breathless abandon for us to resume our look back through my work for MAD Magazine! This week’s episode features the very FIRST parody where I used a Wacom Cintiq for the digital coloring. It was a spoof of the movie “Van Helsing” written by Dick DeBartolo and first appearing in MAD #445, Sept 2004. I have the pencil roughs for this one! I remember this assignment, particularly the splash page, because it was set up differently than a typical splash. There was a column of panels on the right that delved into the actual parody, leaving only… READ MORE
July 5th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s yet another electrifying episode of the chronologial crawl through my work at MAD magazine. This week is a look at the parody of the TV show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (with the original cast) from MAD #443, July 2004. This feature was my the first collaboration between me and former MAD editor Dave Croatto. I would go on to illustrate on other MAD parody written by Dave just a few issues later, but years later he and I would team up to do two MAD children’s book parody books, Goodnight Batcave and Superman and the Miserable, Rotten, No Fun, Really Bad Day. Once again when doing one… READ MORE
