Sunday Mailbag: Working in Other Styles?

Q: For your most recent MAD cover (issue #23), did MAD tell you to draw in your older style? I noticed that it resembles a lot of your early MAD work. The line width, colors, and shading kind of resemble your earlier MAD work, I’ve noticed that’s the style in many of your older assignments.

A: Here’s the cover in question:

No, MAD didn’t ask me to work in anything other than my usual style. Actually I am not quite sure what you are seeing in this that seems like an “older” version of my work. To me my earlier MAD stuff looked stiff and the color over done compared to my later work, and I don’t see that here. Your mileage may vary, though.

This question does open the door to a slightly different question, though… does MAD ever ask me to work in any other style? Sure they do. When you do parodies of picture books, comics, cartooning, animation, etc, part of the effectiveness of the spoof is getting the look and feel of the target of the parody. That means aping the style of the original. I’ve done that many times for MAD. Here’s a few examples:

MAD did a series of kids book parodies about 5 years ago where I needed to capture the look of the original visuals from famous children’s books mashed up with DC Comics Characters:

There is a “review” of the above book on Amazon where the reviewer, a self-professed MAD fan, complained that my art wasn’t up to its usual standards for this book. That made me LOL. That person couldn’t be much of a MAD fan if he didn’t understand what the art for a parody of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” children’s book need to be in order to work.

In the first issue of the “reboot” of MAD I was asked to channel classic Will Elder for the first half of a “Riverdale” spoof:

The Tarantino stuff I did for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” wasn’t a straight Jack Davis impression but they wanted that flavor. Leo’s boots and the washy look of the watercolor did the trick:

Aping the styles of other artists is important for parody purposes, but not something I am overly fond of doing. Once MAD realized I was able to do that for almost any style effectively I got those assignments now and again. I remember art director Sam Viviano telling me a story about his experience doing similar work. He is also someone who can ape the look of other styles very well, and he got a few of those assignments from MAD back when he was freelancing rather than art directing for the magazine. He told me he was concerned he’d become the go to “copycat” artist for them and not get to do his own style as often as he liked. He told me he went to the MAD staff and told them he didn’t mind doing the copycat work in the interest of serving a parody of something, but he wanted to make sure he got to do an assignment in his own style after any “mimicking of another style” jobs. Sam was my art director at MAD for most of my time there, and since he was sensitive to that issue I never got pigeonholed into the role of main MAD mimic artist. I only did a handful of those assignments and most of what I did was my own style.

I often refuse to take regular freelance jobs where I am asked to copy the style of another artist just because they want that look. For example I was hired by Hardees to do a “Fold-In” ad for them years ago where they wanted me to copy Al Jaffee‘s style. I told them I’d do a “Fold-In” but in my own style, not Jaffee’s. This was the result:

Not too long ago I was asked to do a band cover that was basically a copy of the Mort Drucker “Anthrax” cover, only with the members of a different band. I politely declined that one. That’s not a parody, but could best be described as an “homage”, which is a slippery slope.

Thanks to Yoni Smook 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!