MADness #27- The Matrix!

It’s yet another mind-bending episode of our chronological caper through my work at MAD Magazine! This week’s episode is a three page feature entitled “Is Our World Really All That different from The Matrix?”, written by MAD editor Greg Leitman and appearing in MAD #436, Dec 2003.

Most of these gags involved 2003 current events that, if you don’t remember those events, won’t make much sense. The guy reading the New York Times on the third page was a reporter named Jayson Blair who got busted for fabricating and plagiarising work he had published in the Times. Madonna and Britney Spears kissed on the 2003 MTV VMAs. Geraldo Rivera was kicked out of Iraq after he revealed future troop movements within the country on a live FOX broadcast. Etc.

There were two other Matrix-centric features in this issue (“Monroe and The Matrix” and “MAD‘s Unreal Outtakes from The Matrix Revolutions”… the latter also written by Greg Leitman), plus a Matrix cover. This was of course because the issue hit newsstands in mid October of 2003 and in early November “The Matrix Revolutions” was to be released in theaters.

I can’t remember anything interesting or unusual about this particular job, except I had fun drawing the Matrix characters. Here’s the pencil roughs from that assignment:

Toon in next week for another hair-raising episode, when we return to the world of movie parodies and rock and roll!