MADness #87- Mad Men!

Break out the bourbon and light up your smokes, it’s time for another look back at the work I did for MAD magazine! This week we revisit one of my all time favorite parodies I ever did for the magazine, a spoof of the TV series “Mad Men”, written by Arnie Kogen and first appearing in MAD #508, April 2011.

Why is this one of my favorites? First off, I loved the show so it was not a chore watching episodes and getting to know the characters, which helps a lot of both the caricatures and coming up with insider gags. Second, the show was set in the 1960’s, so drawing the clothes, styles and environments made it feel like I was working back in the heyday of MAD. It was just all around fun.

In fact, anyone who owns a copy of my book The Mad Art of Caricature knows I used this parody in the chapter where I explain how caricature fits into the MAD movie parody, and the process of doing the art for one of those parodies. A lot of the images I’m sharing here are from that chapter in the book.

The pencil rough above if pretty rough, with just a basic indication of the caricatures. In the final pencil, I would work out the likenesses and the rest of the image more tightly. Here’s a close up of part of the splash page at the different stages:

Here’s a look at some of the other stages of the art:

Toon in next week for another TV spoof, where I get to draw anew a familiar subject!