Monday MADness- Caricature Deja Vu!

Totally Useless Fax Dept.

You would think it a fairly common occurrence that, in the process of doing movie and TV parodies for MAD, I would often end up drawing the same actors over and over in different shows or films. Actually outside of when an actor appears in the same role in sequels or movies series, that hasn’t happened all that much for me.

I remember drawing both Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson in the spoofs of “Behind Enemy Lines” and then “The Royal Tennenbaums” just a couple of issues later. I drew Hugh Jackman in “X-2” and then “Van Helsing” less than a year later. Technically I did Heath Ledger in two different parodies, but I don’t think you can really count his appearance in “The Dark Knight” and “Brokeback Mountain” as being caricatures of the same guy… he was heavily made-up as the Joker. I’ve drawn Gwyneth Paltrow in two roles, both in the a fore mentioned “The Royal Tennenbaums” and as Pepper Pots in both the “Iron Man” and “The Avengers” parodies. I’ve also drawn Woody Harrelson in both “The Hunger Games” movie parodies and this year’s spoof of the TV show “True Detective”. There may be some other examples but I can’t come up with any. I definitely cannot think of a single instance where I drew an actor in three different roles in separate parodies.

I was trying to think who would have seen the longest stretch of time between my drawing them in a MAD parody, and this is not including my adding them as a cameo of some kind… only as a significant role or character in the actual show being spoofed.

My first thought was Claire Danes. I first drew her in the Dick DeBartolo scribed parody of “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” (“Interminable 3: Rise of the Bad Scenes”) in MAD #432, Aug 2003:

Then I just drew her last year in the spoof of the Showtime series “Homeland” (“Ho-HumLand”) written by David Shayne in MAD #523, Oct 2013. That’s a span of 91 issues and 10 years, 2 months:

Claire does not take home the so-called prize, however. That belongs to Bryan Cranston, who appeared in my very first parody I ever did for MAD, “Malcomn in the Middle” (“Malcontent in the Muddle) written by Desmond Devlin in MAD #403, March 2001 (this one is so old, I don’t even have the original digital files anymore… these are scans of printed pages):

I drew him again in another Devlin authored parody, this time of “Breaking Bad” (“Fading Bad”) in MAD #516, August 2012. A span of 113 issues and 11 years, 5 months:

None of that is of any particular interest except maybe to me and a few MAD fans. It is gratifying to see the improvement I’ve made in my skills when comparing two subjects caricatured over a decade apart. If I keep at this I might get the hang of it in about decade or so.