MADness #6: Cable TV Viewing Odds!

I’ve told some of this story before here, so forgive me if you’ve already heard it. While this feature posted today was my 6th appearance in MAD, it was actually the very FIRST piece I was ever assigned from them. “MAD‘s Cable TV Viewing Odds”, written by John Biederman, appeared in MAD #406, June 2001… almost a year after I originally turned in the job.

So technically this was the very first job I ever got from MAD. It was assigned to me in early June of 2000. I was told it was originally slated for MAD #398, but I got a call from MAD art director Sam Viviano shortly after turning in the job that it had been “bumped” and would appear in a future issue sometime. This job was what is called an “evergreen” feature… meaning it is not timely and can be run virtually at any time when they need a couple of pages filled at the last second, say if another feature was late. Conversely, features that are “evergreen” that were scheduled for print can get bumped for a more timely piece should one get put together at the last minute, since the evergreen one can run later and still be relevant. That’s what I was told happened to this one. However, I was once told that MAD would sometimes produce these kinds of evergreen pieces, written and drawn by newbies, as a sort of “trial” run for new creators. If the piece turned out well, it would eventually run and the creators who did it would get more work. If it turned out badly, it might never see print and the artist who did it would probably never get another assignment. There have been a LOT one one-and-done artists with MAD. I am not really sure if this was ever seriously planned for immediate print, or if it was one of those test pieces and always destined for the “evergreen” drawer. Regardless, MAD pays on delivery so although it was bumped I was paid for the job.

Incidentally that is why this piece is in black and white. It was assigned to me when the magazine was still in black and white, and they never asked me color it when it was put in a later issue. Actually for the first few issues after going to color with #403, MAD still had a lot of black and white pieces from earlier assigned jobs and from artists who didn’t work in color, so it was not unusual to still see black and white pieces in the magazine.

Needless to say I was pretty disappointed that the piece was bumped and there was no set print date for it. However Sam told me they were happy with the work, that it would eventually be printed, and that I’d be getting another call soon. So, I waited for the phone to ring.

And waited.

And waited.

July went by with no call. August was going by with no call. In my head I was thinking “I blew it. I had a chance with MAD Magazine and I didn’t do a good enough job on it. It’s over.” I thought I was going to join the ranks of the MAD one-and-dones. Actually I do think that the staff’s opinion of this first job was not overly enthusiastic, and that my future with the magazine was hanging in the balance.

Well, eventually the phone did ring and Sam was on the other end of the line, but it was not a job for the print magazine.

At that time MAD was actually doing some original online content. YES… in 2000 MAD was ahead of its time doing online work on their madmag.com website! Called the “MADness of the Week”, these were specially written and drawn features that were sometimes “rollover” images or illustrations that had pop up gags, sometimes static images with text and later included flash-based shorts with limited animation. MAD had their freelancers do the writing and art, and then the staff would produce the features and post them weekly. This led to a lot of quick turnaround jobs for freelancers. My first “published” work for MAD was actually on their website. I did a couple of quick pieces for them in August and September of 2000. This was one:

This piece featured caricatures of 2000 presidential hopefuls Pat Buchannan, George W. Bush, Al Gore, and Ralph Nader as contestants on “Presidential Survivor”. “Survivor” was a brand new show around then and quite a phenomenon. Nader being naked was in reference to “Survivor” contestant Richard Hatch, who often played naked. On the MAD website when you rolled your cursor over one of the figures, there was a pop-up that had some gags in it about that candidate. I did one other small piece for the website before I was assigned another job destined for print, which became my first appearance in the magazine.

Toon in next week for the thrilling tale of my 7th MAD appearance, a seven pager that ended up being the first of many sports-centric MAD pieces I would do.