Monday MADness- My First MAD job!

I was at the National Cartoonists Society’s annual Reuben Weekend in Philadelphia and sat in on a MAD magazine panel. During the panel, I was asked about how I got started with the magazine. I thought about it afterward and it was basically exactly 18 years ago, shortly after the 2000 Reuben Weekend, that I got my first assignment from MAD. It was a three pager entitled “MAD‘s Cable TV Viewing Odds” written by John Biederman.

This job was what is called an “evergreen” feature… meaning it is not timely and can be run virtually at any time when they need a couple of pages to fill. MAD used to assign these kinds of jobs to new artists as a kind of test run to see how they do. Sometimes it’s the one and only job they ever give to that artist, and sometimes it’s the beginning of a number of jobs. As always. you are paid on delivery of the art… so if it does not see publication for months (or ever) you get the dough but maybe not that elusive credit in the magazine.

Anyway, I turned in the job and they stuck it in the “evergreen” drawer for a few months. It ended up being printed in MAD #406, June 2001. It became my sixth appearance in print in the magazine, even though it was actually the first art I ever drew for them.

Here is a mock-up of the feature from my archives, splash up top and the final page below. I placed the final illustrations in the rough layout just to see how it would look. The actual printed article was a little different.