Tom’s MADness!
April 15th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another nauseating Monday MADness as we chronologically look back at my work for MAD Magazine! We are nearing the end of the New York MAD era with this peek at a piece I did for MAD #544 (April 2017) called “The Trump Family Circus”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin! Mimicking Bil (and later Jeff) Keane‘s art style was nothing new for me. Just a few years earlier I did a similar job for MAD #520 called “Honey Boo Boo’s Family Circus”, but that one was written by Frank Santopadre. Most of the interesting things about a job like this I wrtoe about… READ MORE
March 25th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
We interrupt the incessant and increasingly idiotic idling through my work at MAD because it was at this point in the timeline that it was announced MAD was moving from its New York City home of 65 years to sunny Burbank, California. Most people who read this blog already know this story, but this next paragraph is the tl;dr version of why this happened: In 2015 DC Entertainment closed up the New York City offices of its DC Comics publishing group and moved everything to the Warner Bros Complex out in Burbank. MAD was part of those publishing operations and the magazine’s offices were part… READ MORE
March 18th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
No one is happy that today is both a Monday and the day after St. Patricks Day, but we here at Tom’s MAD Blog are ready to make things even worse for you with yet another episode of our cringey chronological crawl through Tom’s work at MAD. We’ve reached the end of 2016, and that meant another year end “MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things” issue. I had two pieces in this issue, this one being one of those extremely rare instances of a political piece that didn’t have anything to do with Trump. This feature first appeared in MAD #543, Feb 2017 and… READ MORE
March 11th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Clicky to Embiggen… Here we go with another moronic MAD Monday look back at my work for MAD Magazine! This week we get away from the world of movie and TV parodies when we look back at the art for a political piece called “The Last 100 Days of the Obama Presidency”, written by Jeff Kruse and Kenny Keil, and first appearing in MAD #542, Dec 2016. Jeff and Kenny were two writers I didn’t work with much during my MAD run. Jeff started writing for MAD just a few years before I started drawing for them, and was pretty prolific, doing both full articles… READ MORE
March 4th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Welcome to another edition of Monday MADness, where we continue on our seemingly endless trek through my work at MAD Magazine. This week it’s yet another spoof of a show targeted at that huge MAD-loving demographic, HGTV viewers! Yes, I am still scratching my head over why we did a parody of a show like “Fixer Uppers” in 2016 when we ignored huge hits like “NCIS”, “Blue Bloods”, “Criminal Minds”, “Empire” and “The Blacklist”. However we can’t complain about MAD‘s MADdset writer Dick DeBartolo‘s damn funny script for this one… and frankly I didn’t mind ridiculing Chip and Joanna Gaines‘s show. We did it all… READ MORE
February 5th, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Happy Monday! Time to continue on with our excruciatingly slow crawl through the decades of my work at MAD Magazine. The force is definitely NOT with us this week as we look back again at MAD #439, June 2016. Why a second look? Because I did two things for this issue! Looking back, MAD #439 was a groundbreaker for me for two reasons. As I detailed in our last installment, it was the first time I got to do the art for the cover of a regular issue of MAD. The second reason was for another bucket list moment… doing the art for a parody of… READ MORE
January 22nd, 2024 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Yes… it’s the moment you have all been dreading! It’s the return that no one asked for of my Monday MADness retrospective of the work I did for MAD Magazine. If you’ll recall in our last episode we looked at MAD‘s spoof of “The Hunger Games: The Mocking Jay Parts 1 & 2” from MAD #538. Time to move on to MAD #539, June 2016, which featured my first ever actual MAD cover! Covers are rare birds for several reasons. First, at that time there were only six a year. Second, Covers are usually of the hyper-realistic style of art and as Mark Fredrickson is a master… READ MORE
December 18th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s another grody Monday, dudes and dudettes! That means it’s time for a totally tubular trip down the gnarly path that was my work for MAD Magazine. As if! This week we take another rad side trip from the magazine itself to look at my second “bookazine” cover, this one for the “MAD Spoof’s the 80’s: Special Collector’s Edition (Spring 2016)”, which is a fancy title for “here’s a bunch of reprinted stuff from about 30 years ago we’d like you to pay to read again.” Wait, that’s kind of MAD’s current business model, isn’t it? Gag me with a spoon. Not much to really… READ MORE
