MADness #1: Home Theater Gadgets!

Since it looks like I’ve probably done my last job for MAD Magazine, I am going to start showing each piece I did for the magazine in chronological order here on the Monday MADness feature, and telling any stories associated with them. I know I showed a few of these recently but I’m a completist so here’s my first ever published MAD piece, from MAD #399, Nov 2000 written by Dick DeBartolo.

This was not actually the first piece I ever did for the magazine. I did this one in September of 2000, and my first assignment was in June of 2000, but that one didn’t get published until 2001. I also did a few pieces for the MAD website that summer. This was the first one that saw print in the magazine.

The thing I remember most about this piece was how dumb I was not paying attention to how much room the word balloons were taking up. I added several “chicken fat” gags that got completely covered up by word boxes. Here’s the raw inks from that spread:

I threw in some goofy “basement” gags like the cockroaches watching the movie on the speaker on the left, the singing fish and black velvet Elvis painting on the wall on the right, the ugly bowling trophy by the stairs, and all the remote controls all over the floor, all of which were completely lost under the word boxes! My fault, I’m sure. I don’t have the original layouts they sent me but as it has always been standard practice to send a completed mechanical with all word boxes placed, so I must have just not been paying attention. Wasted effort.

Incidentally, issue #399 was the last issue of MAD that was printed entirely in black and white, on the old, crappy paper stock. The next issue was #400, which had a lot of color and was on upgraded stock. MAD #401 had a color section for the “MAD 20″ and #402 had a lot of color features, and both were printed on the upgraded stock. MAD #403 was when MAD switched to color and started printing real ads. So, I had this one piece printed in the “classic” MAD format.

When issue #399 hit the newsstands in October of 2000, we threw a party at our house!

Next week: Fake Covers from “The Untold History of MAD” from MAD #400, Dec 2000!