MADness #36: Two and a Half Men!

As if Monday’s weren’t bad enough, it’s time for another nauseating look back at my furshlugginer work for MAD Magazine! Today’s episode is another MAD TV show parody, spoofing “Two and a Half Men”, written by the great Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #450, February 2005.

This parody was done when the show was hugely popular and before star Charlie Sheen went off the deep end, which is why you’ll find no references to tiger’s blood, warlocks, “winning”, or general delusion. I cannot remember if I was in a real hurry on this one due to a tight deadline, but the pencil roughs I have saved are particularly “rough”. I think this was a time where I was intentionally trying to not spend as much time on my roughs I sent to MAD and doing the heavy lifting with the drawing on the final pencil stage. I think this was because, after four years of regular work for the magazine, the staff was becoming a lot more comfortable with knowing I would deliver a good final piece so they didn’t need to see polished pencils at the review/approval stage.

I think it was around this time that art director Sam Viviano stopped sending me “doodles” of splash pages along with the mechanical layouts and script. Sam did that for the first few years I did work for MAD. These would be very rough compositions that were part showing me how they envisioned the splash page when they set up the type, and part “hand holding”. Sam gave up doing that eventually when, I think, I demonstrated I was able to compose a “MAD worthy” splash without the help.

MAD already had a bit of a connection to the show. Comic book fans and insiders know Grant Geissman as a historian of E.C. Comics and MAD, and the author of three books Collectibly Mad (Kitchen Sink Press, 1995); Tales of Terror! The EC Comics Companion, (co-authored with Fred von Bernewitz) (Fantagraphics, 2000); and Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics! (HarperDesign, 2005). To the rest of the world he is a world class guitarist/musician and composer, playing and recording with many music legends including being part of Chuck Mangione’s regular band, and has been nominated for multiple Emmy’s for the music for several TV shows including… you guessed it… “Two and a Half Men”. Anyway, we had to include Grant in a cameo in the spoof. That’s him as a homeless busker in the bottom right panel in the page above.

If it seems like I was being a little more cruel in my caricatures of Jon Cryer, you are probably right. When I was in college in the late 80’s I was nicknamed “Duckie” by some fellow students because they thought I looked like that Jon Cryer character in “Pretty in Pink”. I took out some long festering animosity on Jon Cryer. Sorry, Jon.

This parody was the last in what would end up being my longest run of consecutive jobs that were movie or TV parodies for MAD. This was my seventh such job in a row, and my next assignment was a different feature. They did not run in consecutive issues, because there were a couple of issues in there I did not have any work in. It was a fun run for me doing these “continuity” jobs, which were always my favorites.

This parody was also the first one I did where I ended up being contacted by someone from the show and having them buy the original art from me (I was contacted by Bryan Cranston after MAD’s spoof of “Malcolm in the Middle” came out, but he didn’t buy any of the art). “Two and a Half Men” show creator Chuck Lorre is a big MAD fan, and he contacted MAD about the art, and they put him in touch with me. Chuck in fact did buy the original splash page of this spoof, but we also printed an oversized version of the printed splash for him to give to the cast and crew.

In fact, the cast made the MAD letters page a few issues later:

Presumably all but Melanie Lynskey are appalled by their caricatures. Angus T. Jones seems confused… he’s probably asking “what’s MAD Magazine?”

The best part of this for me was getting one of those oversized prints we made for Chuck back with the signatures of the entire cast, which currently hangs in my studio!

Toon in next week when we take a look back at another of my monuments in underachievement for MAD, this time dissing a show that can’t decide if was a reality show, a sport, or just general mindless entertainment, and ends up not being any of them!