Sunday Mailbag- Original Art Size?

Q: What size do you work at for your MAD pages? There’s so much detail… I imagine you work much larger than the printed page size.

A: Much bigger. Twice the size, in fact.

Typically comic book artists work on 11 inch x 17 inch art boards with a “live” art area of about 10 x 15. With a comic book page print size of around 6.625 x 10.125 inches, most original art is done at about 148% enlargement, meaning the artist is working at a size about 148% bigger than what the art will print at.

My MAD pages are done at 200% of print size, and since magazine pages print bigger than comic book pages (a MAD page is 8.125 x 10.5 inches) that makes my original art pages huge… 16.25 x 21 inches! The boards are 17″ x 23″.

Why so big? Frankly it’s MAD (and EC Comics) tradition.

When I first started for MAD back in 2000 they would send me the bristol boards with the panels and balloons already ruled on them in pencil. Former MAD art director Lenny “The Beard” Brenner still did that for the movie and TV parodies at the time. I would get these enormous bristol boards in the mail and that was what I was supposed to work on. I got used to working that size, and even after MAD stopped sending me the boards and I had to get them myself and do the mechanicals as well (the lazy bums), I stuck with the same size. They also sent me “kid” finish boards (vellum or rougher surface) as opposed to the smoother stuff. I got used to that to. I still work on the same size and finished boards today.

I was told this was MAD and EC Comics tradition dating back to the original “Tales from the Crypt” and Harvey Kurtzman MAD days. Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Bill Elder and the other original MAD and EC artists worked that big from the very beginning. No one really explained to me why. Yes, details are easier when you work that big but they can easily be lost when your pages are reduced to 50% of the size you work at. It’s very easy to use too delicate a line or place lines too closely together and the art becomes muddy and indistinct when reduced that much. I have to be careful with things like crosshatching or other techniques working at 200%. Maybe those early EC artists preferred the ability to add detail and just understood how to handle the 50% reduction. Regardless they did it brilliantly. Who was I to argue with that?

Thanks to R Griffin 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!