Tom’s MADness!
June 12th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”– Bilbo Baggins. Truer words were never spoken, especially regarding this seemingly never ending slog through my work for MAD Magazine! Here’s we are… another Monday and another look back at a middling art job on another middle earth film parody. This time it’s “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #527, June 2014. I often use this splash page as an example of how… READ MORE
June 5th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here we go with another ridiculous look back at my work for MAD magazine! We are entering 2014 in our little chronological trip, and this week we take a gray and dreary trudge through the dystopian world of “The Hunger Games” with MAD‘s spoof of the second film “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, written by my CLAPTRAP collaborator Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #526, April 2014. I had some fun on this splash page. The scene called for the crowd to do the “three fingered salute” from the film that was a sign solidarity against the “Capitol” and support for the rebellious protagonist… READ MORE
May 22nd, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday, and you know what that means! Yes, for most people it means you had to get up and go to work… but that’s the good news! The bad news is that it’s time for yet another sickening look back at my work for MAD Magazine. This week we have a peek at the second piece I had in MAD #525 (Feb 2014), a parody of the TV show “The Following”, written by the great Arnie Kogen. As I foreshadowed last week, with this particular assignment I tried something different I had never attempted before. So what was this experimental technique I tried, and why… READ MORE
May 15th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Welcome to Monday, and another nauseatingly nostalgic look back at my work for MAD magazine! Nostalgic? Seems like current events to me! French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once wrote “the more things change the more they stay the same”… or maybe that was Jon Bon Jovi. Anyway this piece was part of MAD‘s “Dumbest People, Events, and Things of 2013” from MAD #525. Written by Jay Rath. This was 2013, and here we are in 2023 looking at the same garbage on Capitol Hill. Poor Rick Meyerowitz… his classic illustration for the Animal House movie poster might be the most parodied movie poster ever. MAD got in on the action with this… READ MORE
May 8th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Look, Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… MONDAY! That means it’s time to upend truth, justice, and the American Way with another look at the alien life form that was my work for MAD Magazine! This week we have a look back at MAD‘s parody of the movie “Man of Steel”, written by my claptrap co-hort Desmond Devlin and first appearing in MAD #524, December 2013. I don’t have much in the way of backstory for this job. It was just the usual rigamarole. I do remember having a lot of fun drawing Michael Shannon as General Zod. There is… READ MORE
May 1st, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday again… or IS it? You never really know what’s real and what’s not in the shadowy world of espionage, but regardless we are going to spy out this TV parody of the Showtime series “Homeland” from MAD #523, October 2013, written by MAD editor David Shayne. One thing I remember about doing this one was that that the MAD folks wanted me to put the spies from Spy vs. Spy in as many background cameos and gags as I could. I didn’t include them in the splash page in my initial rough so I added them in the final. They show up a… READ MORE
April 24th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Goblins, Wargs, and Dwarves… oh my! It’s a Middle-Earth Monday as we continue our journey along the paths through the Mirkwood that was my work for MAD Magazine. That trip seems short compared to the long, drawn out, padded three movie trek to the Lonely Mountain that only took one book to accomplish! This was the parody for the first of “The Hobbit” trilogy movies “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and first appeared in MAD #522, September 2013. Due to the odd nature of the splash with the map and overlaying insets I didn’t do the inked text… READ MORE
April 10th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… MONDAY! That means it’s time for another super-disappointing look back at my work for MAD Magazine! It’s kinda funny (funny haha not funny strange) that I interrupted posting about this MAD job last week to share a new cover I had just done for the magazine, considering I intended to write about how I was always angling to do a cover and kept taking baby steps towards that goal with the MAD staff. This was one of those baby steps. Throughout its existence MAD has produced quite a lot of different special issues,… READ MORE
