Even More Comic-Con!

Picture by Tom Racine

We are going to dispense with the Sunday Mailbag this week in order to continue with our annoying coverage of San Diego Comic-Con.

Yesterday was a busy day for me here, starting with the Mad About MAD panel at 10:00 am and then signings at both the DC Comics booth and the Warner Bros booth with fellow MAD men Sam Viviano and John Ficarra, and MAD animated show writer and producer Kevin Shinick, plus a surprise appearance on at the Quick Draw! program in between. I wish I had some pictures of the panel but unfortunately I do not. Tom Racine of Tall Tall Radio fame was kind enough to send me the picture above from one of my signings at the DC booth earlier in the weekend. Speaking of Tall Tale Radio, go to the link in the previous sentence to see some great Comic Con coverage.

The panel discussion went well. I got the opportunity to see some of the animations for the first time, including about 5 seconds of one of the segments I worked on. The show is going to consist of a lot of different types of animation from somewhat traditional to collage to stop motion and a lot of different styles of art. Each 5 minute episode will consist of as many as 20 different segments, some as long as 2-3 minutes and some as short as 10 seconds. Many of the segments shown on the “sizzle reel” got good laughs and it was obvious that the show will be very much like the magazine… short bits of comedy one after the other satirizing pop culture, movies, TV and other things the world takes too seriously. Overall the response was very positive to the footage. I don’t think the video they showed will be posted on the internet (legally, meaning by WB or Cartoon Network) but if it is I will certainly link to it. As far as my work on it is concerned, in my very quick glimpse I thought I could see my artwork peeking through after the necessary adjustments the animators had to make… it will be fun to see a whole episode.

Sam and John did a presentation on the history of MAD which got big laughs and each of us on the panel told a few stories about how we discovered MAD and how we ended up working on the magazine. The audience asked a few questions and we were whisked off to sign copies of the magazine at the DC booth.

I’ve got a few people who have promised to send me pictures of the events, so when I do a full wrap up of the Comic-Con I’ll hopefuly have those to share.

In the meantime, today is the last day of the con and I will be signing free copies of MAD (until they run out) at the DC Comics booth (#1915) from 12:30-1:30 and drawing and selling MAD originals at the National Cartoonists Society booth (#1307) from 2:00-4:00. Then I will be laying down with a cold compress over my forehead for several hours.