MADness #45- Schiavo Media Circus!

Does that smell of peanuts, popcorn and animal feces mean the circus is in town? Sorry, no. It’s another Monday edition of our chronological crawl through my work at MAD Magazine… which at least accounts for the smell of feces. Today we have a look at my second “MAD 20″ piece for the magazine, this one about the terrible story of Terri Schiavo and the horrific political posturing and media frenzy that surrounded it. There is no writing credit on the feature, which means it was written by the editorial staff.

Starting in 1999 (for the year 1998) MAD did a feature called “MAD‘s 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of (that year)” in their January issue. This feature last ran in MAD #11, Feb 2020 for the year 2019. I did a piece for the “MAD 20 of 2000″ as one of my first jobs for the magazine, but did not do another one until this piece, which was part of the MAD 20 of 2005. This piece first appeared in MAD #461, January 2006.

The Terri Schiavo story is a sad one revolving around the legalities of euthanasia I’m not going to go into it here, but if you want to read about it just google her name. This piece is a great example of how MAD could take a very serious subject and make a powerful statement using satirical humor. In typical MAD fashion, they didn’t make fun of Terri’s situation but of the opportunistic politicians and media that used her tragedy for their own means. I found juxtaposing the caricatures and circus theme with the realistic image of Terri in her hospital bed at the bottom was very effective. In fact it even fit in with the circus theme, as it is reminiscent of Emmett Kelly’s famous “Weary Willie” sad clown routine.

The above is the original layout they sent me. I was directed to make this look like a classic old school circus billboard/poster.

The above is the original rough of this piece. After seeing this the editors at MAD decided they wanted to elongate the poster so it was more of the dimensions of an actual circus billboard poster (rather than the dimensions of the magazine page), which gave us a little more room for the various elements. They did some quick design surgery and came up with this:

I have to say I much preferred the original G.W. Bush figure with the arching back in the original sketch, but the editors really wanted the more stretched out look. Oh well.

I really liked how this piece turned out. It’s a tough subject you need to treat properly in writing and visuals to pull off.

Toon in next week as we hit the hardwood and throw up some bricks from way downtown with another sports-cntric assignment!