Monday MADness- A Favorite Panel from MAD #406

February 11th, 2019 | Posted in MAD Magazine

Comedian Tom Green is sort of back in the public eye right now being a contestant on “Celebrity Big Brother”. Coincidentally he appeared in my favorite panel from my very first MAD job… the first assigned to me that is. It was actually the sixth feature I drew that saw print in the magazine. MAD would sometimes give a kind of “test” assignment to new artists. You got paid for it and everything, but the subject was usually an “evergreen” piece, meaning it could be run anytime as it was not of a timely nature (thus “evergreen”). This was from “MAD‘s Cable TV Viewing Odds” that appeared in MAD #406, June 2001, written by John Biederman.

This one is also part of a story from back in my theme park caricature days. I was still doing caricatures full time at my park operation during the summer back then, and as Tom Green was pretty popular (or at least well known) in the early 2000’s I turned this caricature of him into a park sample for the wall of one of my booths:

This led to the following exchange with a 10 year old kid out at the park:

Kid (looking at the sample on the wall): That’s Tom Green! Who drew that one?

Me: I did.

Kid: I saw that picture in an issue of MAD Magazine! YOU STOLE THAT DRAWING OUT OF MAD MAGAZINE!!!!

Me: I work for MAD Magazine. I originally did that for MAD.

Kid looks at me blankly, blinking several times for a few seconds.

Kid: “Yeah….. RIIIIIIGHT.” Walks way.

Me: …


Comments

  1. Demetrius Dillard says:
    February 12, 2019 at 1:32 pm

    I remember this article vividly; your caricatures of Tom Green, Chuck Norris, Tyne Daly, Joan and Melissa Rivers, and Humphrey Bogart were excellent (as always). If memory serves, it was also your last assignment to be printed in monochrome (Mad officially transitioned to color beginning with issue #403 [March 2001], three issues earlier).

    • Tom Richmond says:
      February 12, 2019 at 1:47 pm

      Thanks! Actually no, the last piece I had that was published in B&W was called “Conclusive Evidence of the Ever Widening Gap Between Baseball’s Small & Large Market Teams”, written by Scott Lieberman and appearing in MAD #421, Sept 2002. I do not know why MAD still had new pieces done in B&W after they switched to color. I understood work that had been done PRIOR to the shift to color and was in the evergreen drawer would be printed as is later in the color issues, but this an at least one other job I did in B&W was assigned to me well after the whole magazine was color.

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