Tom’s MADness!
June 28th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
We are back on track with another exciting episode of our chronological crawl through my work for MAD Magazine! This week features MAD’s spoof of the TV show “The O.C.” written by Dennis Snee and appearing in MAD #442, June 2004. I have some of the original pencil roughs for this one as well as the finals. This show was set in Orange County, California and was about teenagers from that area. I knew a couple of teenagers from OC, Joe and Luke McGarry, who were the teenage sons of cartoonist Steve McGarry, then president of the National Cartoonists Society. So, I drew Joe and… READ MORE
June 7th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Hold onto your butts! It’s another edge-of-your-seat episode of our chronological wandering through my work for MAD Magazine! This week’s stop is a two pager poking fun at “American Idol”, written by Greg Leitman and appearing in MAD #440, April 2004. This piece features a couple of inside jokes and cameos. First, the names on the blackboard Pete Rose is putting the betting odds on are the names of my four kids as well as Max Korn and Brady, the daughter of a couple of good friends of ours, Keelan and Barbie Parham: Speaking of Keelan and Barbie, they make a cameo here as well:… READ MORE
June 1st, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s yet another stop on our long and winding road of jobs I did for MAD Magazine. Today is a look at MAD’s spoof of the movie “School of Rock”, written by Dick DeBartolo and appearing in MAD #438, Feb 2004. I am sometimes asked if doing parodies of comedies is a bit trickier than doing them of dramas or “serious” movies. It is but really only from the writing sense. Making fun of a plot that is in and of itself a satire or meant to be silly is a tougher nut to crack for the writer. Dick did a great job on this… READ MORE
May 17th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I’m sure you are on the edge of your seat for yet another fascinating episode from our weekly chronological crawl through my work for MAD Magazine. This week’s episode features a spoof of the TLC home improvement show “Trading Spaces”, written by MAD‘s Maddest writer Dick Debartolo, and appearing in MAD #435, November 2003. This was the first of what would be four home improvement/HGTV “reality” show parodies I would draw for MAD, and I believe they did a couple of others drawn by other artists. This always made me scratch my head a bit. There were many really popular TV series that MAD never… READ MORE
May 10th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another riveting episode of Tom’s Chronological MAD Career! This week’s installment is a look at another sports feature entitled “Without Sports…”, written by the late Barry Liebmann, and appearing in MAD #434, Oct 2003. This was one of only two pieces I worked on with Barry, the other in 2012. Barry sadly passed away in 2017 at the way too early age of 63. This piece is memorable for me for two reasons. First, I had a lot of fun including MAD patriarch Bill Gaines as “God” in the upper right corner. I am pretty sure doing that was my idea, but I don’t… READ MORE
May 3rd, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another chapter in our ongoing saga of a look back at all my MAD work in chronological order. This week we have a peek at another movie parody, this time MAD‘s MADdest writer Dick Debartolo and I terminate “Terminator 3”. This spoof appeared in MAD #432, Aug 2003. This is a rare look at my final pencils for a splash page. It’s rare because I very seldom scan in the final pencils. When I post “pencils” here what you are really seeing are the “roughs”, or the initial sketched pages I scan and send to MAD for review. Those I do right on the… READ MORE
April 26th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s yet another thrilling episode of the excruciatingly dull chronological crawl through my work in MAD, featuring my art for the two pager “A MAD Peek Behind the Scenes on the Set of The Hulk.” This piece was written by “MAD‘s MADdest Writer” Dick DeBartolo and “Slightly Disturbed MAD Editor” Greg Leitman. It appeared in MAD #431, July 2003. I did several of these “MAD Peek Behind the Scenes on the Set of…” features, and they were all pretty much the same overhead shot looking down on the set of a TV show or movie with caricatures of the cast as well as set workers,… READ MORE
April 19th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another installment of our ridiculous chronological crawl through my work in MAD! We return to the world of superhero movie spoofs with this parody of the film “X2”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and appearing in MAD #430, June 2003. The movie debuted in theaters on May 2, 2003, so we actually had the parody out BEFORE the film, since this issue was on news stand in mid April. Are we clairvoyant? Is Desmond a Time Lord? Did we use MAD Magazine’s tremendous clout in the world of entertainment to see an advanced release of the film? Nope, nope, and MAD has… READ MORE
