Sunday Mailbag

Q: Now that MAD has gone to quarterly, how much has that affected your freelance workload?

A: While I have many other clients sadly there is no question that without the MAD work I am far less busy than I used to be when they were 12 issues a year.

For example, I was notified about the move to quarterly in February while I was working on the art for the “Watchmen” parody. At that same time the previous year (2008) I was doing the art for MAD‘s parody of “Heroes”. At this point of the year (mid August) in 2008 after finishing “Heroes” I had done parodies of “Samantha Who?”, “30 Rock” and “Iron Man” and was working on “The Dark Knight” plus two 2 page articles. This year since “Watchmen” I’ve done one small spot illustration for MAD #500 and am working on a 2 page job for them now. That’s a big difference.

I did do the “Bo Confidential” book for them in May, which was a big job… But yes the magazine work is something I miss a lot both paycheck wise and more for the enjoyment of doing MAD art.

Other clients are keeping me busy and MAD has projects up their sleeve I am sure to work on, so there is little self pity going on with me. I do wish it was different of course and MAD was still published monthly, but life is life. New opportunities and challenges await around the next corner, and MAD is still in the picture.

Thanks to Grant Jonen for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!