Illustration Throwback Thursday #46

The past three weekends in a row I appeared at comic cons in Anaheim CA, Indianapolis IN, and Chicago IL, respectively. It was exhausting and I got really sick before going down to Chicago, so that last one was a rough weekend. I still had a lot of fun, though, and thank you to all who took the time to come up, say hello and to chat.

During one of the many conversations I had with folks, my time at Cracked got brought up. I did four parodies for Cracked back in late 1999/early 2000. All the time I was doing work for them I was sending stuff to MAD trying to get in there. When I tell people the story about how I got started with MAD, I have to confess part of it is untrue. This is the story I tell:

At the NCS Reuben Weekend in New York City in May, 2000, I showed MAD art director Sam Viviano my latest work, including the parody of “Gladiator” I’d just finished for Cracked. He’d been non-committal but encouraging the last several months I’d been regularly sending him work, but this time he saw something he liked and said he thought they would like to give me some work, but he could not promise when that would happen. He also said there was a problem in that no artist working for MAD could have a by-line in a current issue of Cracked.

“That’s no problem” I said, “I don’t draw for Cracked anymore.”

“”Really?” he responded, “When did that happen?”

“Three seconds ago,” I replied.

That is all true except that last part. Well, it’s true I DID say that, but I didn’t mean it. In reality I had already decided I was never going to do another job for Cracked again, and the image you see above, which appeared in Cracked #347, September, 2000, is the reason why. Actually there were a lot of reasons but this one was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

I was assigned the art for a parody of the movie “Gladiator” written by Barry Dutter (a fine writer, BTW). I was told it would be featured in the 8 page color section of the magazine, so I was to do it in color. I spent a lot of time coloring the big splash page and the first two panels when I got a call saying the piece was being bumped back into the black and white section in favor of a parody of a different movie for the color section. That movie?… wait for it….

“Battlefield Earth”

Eventual five time Oscar winning film “Gladiator” played second fiddle to one of the most reviled movies in history in the pages of Cracked. That should tell you all you need to know about the competence of the editorial staff at Cracked at the time.

Anyway after putting up with dismal page rates (which was not just for the art, I also did the layouts and the text/balloon placement!), multiple bad editorial decisions, altering of my artwork without my input, etc., wasting my time on all that coloring was the last straw. I was done with Cracked after that, even if I ended up sweeping floors for a living.

But, the “Three seconds ago” line is a lot funnier.

Here’s how that splash page ended up looking in print: