Tom’s MADness!
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
March 27th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
It’s Monday, and we have a license to be ill looking back at another piece of my work from MAD magazine. This week we spy out mini-parodies of not one, not two, but THREE James Bond films starring Daniel Craig in “Casebook: SPYFAIL- The Battle of the Bonds” from MAD #521, June 2013, written by my CLAPTRAP collaborator Desmond Devlin. These penciled pages are true “roughs” as I just drew blank heads (and made notes as to who is supposed to be who.. although some might say I should do that even with my finished caricatures) and everything is very sketchy, meaning I must have worked out… READ MORE
March 20th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Grab your tiara and Go Go Juice! It’s time for another installment of the train wreck that is our look back at my work for MAD Magazine! This week enter the year 2013 with this piece from MAD #520, “Honey Boo Boo’s Family Circus”, written by Frank Santopadre. I was initially thrilled to get this assignment for a two reasons. First, it wasn’t a movie or TV parody, and while I love doing those for MAD they are a ridiculous amount of work and it’s nice to have a change and do something different now and then. The second, and more relevant for me, was… READ MORE
March 6th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
On no! Monday again?!? It’s that same Bat-time to check on the same Bat-channel that is our look back at my work for MAD Magazine! This week we take a peek at what might be my favorite job I ever did for the magazine, MAD‘s parody of “The Dark Knight Rises”, written by Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #519, February 2013. Why is this my favorite piece for MAD? Several reasons. For one, I’m a huge Batman fan and this was the last of the Christopher Nolan trilogy films, for which I got to do the art for all three. Also this might… READ MORE
February 20th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Fail to the Chief! It’s Monday again, which means it’s time to run another one of the jobs I did for MAD up the flagpole and give it a one fingered salute! This week we leave the world of multiple page, time consuming, research heavy, labor-intensive TV/movie parodies and get away with a really easy assignment… a two page spread that’s mostly the U.S. Flag! The best part about this job is I got paid the same page rate for this as for one of those crazy movie parody splash pages. Factoring in the time involved I went from earning about $3 per hour to… READ MORE
February 15th, 2023 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
It’s another entry into the “Sketch o’the Week” series no one asked for called “TV shows Tom watched after school as a kid”. This week we draw the 60’s TV sitcom star everyone was in love with… and Larry Hagman. “I Dream of Jeannie” was one of those shows I always stopped to watch when flipping through the channels (all three of them) after school in the 1970’s. Sure, I was a little in love with Barbara Eden… who wasn’t? She was gorgeous, funny, charming, and the perfect zany comic foil to the straight laced Hagman. The show ran for five seasons, and was one of the… READ MORE
February 13th, 2023 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here we go with another super-lame look back at my work for MAD Magazine. This week we go back to the endless well that is super-hero movies and revisit MAD‘s spoof of “The Avengers”, written by MAD‘s MADdest writer Dick Debartolo and first appearing in MAD #517, October 2012. If you are looking at these pencil roughs and thinking “these are a lot looser and sketchier than Tom’s usual pencils” you are not crazy. I was making a conscious effort at the time to keep the roughs to a minimum of detail and spend more time drawing things out on the boards, rather than wasting… READ MORE
