Sunday Mailbag- Changing Your Style?

Q: You once told a story that when you showed some of your early works to the MAD brass (Sam Viviano, I believe), you were told that it was a bit too much like Mort Drucker’s work, so you reworked your art to distinguish it from Drucker’s.  I know that artists all agree that when you’re being paid, you give the clients what they want.  However, is it really fair for an artist to be told to “undo” their talent?  If someone paints as well as Michelangelo or Norman Rockwell or Bob Ross and their style skews that way (but not intentionally), is it fair for someone to essentially tell them, “Nah, there’s already someone famous who paints like that.  Create a different style.”?  Can there not be two Michelangelo’s, or Mort Drucker’s for that matter, to have existed?

A: Your recollection of that story is not entirely accurate, and the more correct version paints the situation somewhat differently.

I was president of the National Caricaturists Network (now the International Society of Caricature Artists) in 1999 when I invited newly minted MAD art director Sam Viviano to be a guest speaker at a mini-convention we were having in Connecticut. I thought, with Sam as a captive audience for a couple of days, it would be a perfect time to show him my work in an attempt to get into the magazine. With that in mind I wrote and drew a sample movie parody to show him. The subject was the 1997 film “Godzilla” (the Matthew Broderick one). Sam was supportive with some nice things to say but his basic message was “you are not there yet”. No mention was made of my work being “too close to Mort Drucker‘s”.

That Godzilla parody ended up being published in Cracked magazine after I showed it to them, and I started doing TV/movie spoofs for Cracked. Every time I did a parody for Cracked, I would sent it to MAD to show them my progress.

If one is going to do art for film and TV parodies ala MAD, it’s natural for one to look at the work of those who already do said parodies. Mort basically invented the visuals of that genre, so I poured over old issues of MAD getting a sense of Mort’s storytelling, compositions, etc. while I was drawing these parodies for Cracked. I never directly copied anything of Mort’s, but I did have MAD magazines open all around me when I was doing all this art.

Some time during that process I went on a trip to New York, and stopped into the MAD offices to show more stuff to Sam. When there I was surprised to be invited to go to lunch at the Society of Illustrator’s with both Sam and MAD co-editor Nick Meglin. Nick quite frankly explained to me that MAD does not work with “copycat” artists who ape the styles of their more famous illustrators. However, he told me there is a big difference between someone who intentionally rips off the style of another artist, and someone who is just very heavily influenced by one but is still developing their own voice. He explained that I would not be having lunch with he and Sam if they did not believe I was one of the latter. Nick said “We don’t want a Tom Richmond doing a Mort Drucker impression. We want a Tom Richmond being his best Tom Richmond.”

I went home and put all my MAD magazines away, and continued to do parodies for Cracked. A few months later when I showed Sam and Nick my parody of “Gladiator” they saw what they were looking for, and a few months later I got my first MAD assignment. Admittedly the Drucker flavor in my work took a while longer to fade away. My earliest work in MAD still had too much Mort to it… the curly-que lines in the rendering, certain other conventions that were recognizably Mort, but I was continuing to distance myself from that influence and gaining my own voice. I think Nick and Sam recognized this and thought I might as well develop my style while doing work for them.

That story is a roundabout way to say that the guys at MAD didn’t ask me to change my style. They simply told me the type of work they were looking for, and that what I was doing at the time didn’t fit. All art directors do that. A given project has a certain look they want and they seek out an artist that has that look, ignoring artists that do not. No art director would call an artist and say “I know you are a realistic painter but I need a goofy cartoon illustration, will you change your style for me?” They just look for an artist that matches the look they want.

Nick and Sam could have written me off as another Drucker-clone, but they did not. They had both seen the work of many copycat artists who flat out copy the styles of people like Mort, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, etc. and they knew the limitations such a career path would have, both with MAD and beyond. They saw I had the potential to be more than that, and they were kind enough to take the time to sit down with me and give me some straight advice. It was up to me to take it or not. I took it.

It is no exaggeration that I owe my entire career to that lunch and the generosity and wise advice of those two men, who I am glad to say became dear friends.

Thanks to Arthur Armstrong 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!