MADness #68- Is Obama a Real American?

Fail to the Chief! It’s Monday again, which means it’s time to run another one of the jobs I did for MAD up the flagpole and give it a one fingered salute! This week we leave the world of multiple page, time consuming, research heavy, labor-intensive TV/movie parodies and get away with a really easy assignment… a two page spread that’s mostly the U.S. Flag! The best part about this job is I got paid the same page rate for this as for one of those crazy movie parody splash pages. Factoring in the time involved I went from earning about $3 per hour to earning minimum wage for doing this one! This feature was in reaction to the ridiculous conspiracy theories going around at the time that then President Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. This was written by Barry Liebmann and appeared in MAD #518, December 2012.

It seems I have no actual pencil rough saved. This was what was under all the layers of the working file. I painted this piece digitally with no inked line work.

This was one of only two pieces written by Barry that I ever did the art for, the other being “Without Sports” back in MAD #434. I only met Barry once, and that was at the first MAD holiday party I ever went to, back when they had MAD holiday parties. They were held at the Society of Illustrators in New York, and The Lovely Anna and I went whenever we could. At that first one we ended up sitting at a table with Barry and he was laughing at me because I was kind of freaking out being in the same room with Al Jaffee and Paul Coker Jr. and Angelo Torres and Paul Peter Porges and Frank Jacobs and…. a lot of the longtime Usual Gang of Idiots. I think this was 2000 or maybe 2001… right after I started anyway. Barry had been writing for MAD since the late 70’s and although he was very quiet and unassuming we had a nice chat about working for the magazine. He seemed pretty shy and was kind of amazed I had the audacity to go right up to someone like Al Jaffee and introduce myself and start a conversation.

Sadly Barry passed away in 2017 at the way too young age of 63. I’m glad I got to meet him.

That’s it for another look back at my work for MAD. Toon in next week when we are back to movie parodies, and one of my all time favorite pieces I did for the magazine.