MAD?.. No, But it Helps!

Introducing Alfred

Last year Alfred E Neuman, the MAD magazine mascot turned 60, having been featured on the cover of almost every magazine since 1956. Originally created by Norman Mingo to be a "What me, worry?" face, copied from postcards and adverts popular in the first part of that century. It has since become a famous image, even for those unfamiliar with the magazine. But due to the picture's origins, a court in 1965 found the image to be effectively in the public domain.

So my worries about basing my work on him where unfounded.

Back to the Idioms

The next item on my list was the phrase "better to give that receive". A phrase often used at Christmas to signify to children the importance of giving. What better than to draw something that most kids wouldn't want to receive.

My black-eyed kid based on MAD's mascot.

He's quite a lop-sided little fella isn't he?!

I started out with a rough copy of Alfred, but after I'd blacked his eye out it didn't seem right to keep that cheeky smile. So I changed the mouth and dropped the left eyebrow. This gives quite a non-destinct look, completely changing the character of the drawing.

The comic can be found at: http://funstreak.webcomic.ws/comics/25

How's your Handwriting?

The Idea

A recent social network posting showed a list of top 50 bad habits, and while I didn't bother reading it, I did consider that even aliens might go for this sort of trash too. So I set out to come up with a list related to aliens, and it turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

Here's my list:-

1. Not washing the probe between jobs.
2. Preoccupied with cows?
3. Always holidays in Roswell?
4. Abduction / Body Snatching.
5. Obsessed with crop circles.
6. Buzzing air force pilots.
7. Ruling primitive planets.
8. Always whistling the same 5 note tune.
9. Leaving large drawings and lines in the deserts.
10. Always needing more space?
11. Taking Zambo's (God's) name in vain.
12. Trigger happy?
13. Prefer to work nights.
14. No atmosphere at their parties.
15. Watching too much TV.

OK some of those are just jokes rather than bad habits, but like I said, I (or rather we) struggled a little just to get this many. (Thanks to Julie and Shiela for your help, it would have been a small list without your input.)

Evolving The Idea

It occurred to me these sorts of things are commonly seen in trashy magazines, so I thought it'd be fun to create a parody. This got me thinking about additional articles so googled a bit and came up with the following:-

• Fake advert for slimming supplement.
• Gossip section.
• What your raygun says about you.

But once I'd started drawing it up I thought it would be nice to draw a cartoon from the aliens perspective. I came up with Humanz, a simple stickman based strip, and dropped the raygun idea.

The Artwork

Here's the completed work..

Area 5.1 Bad Habits List Cartoon

There's not actually that much drawing on it, but because of the curve of the pages all the text had to be drawn by hand. It proved difficult and time consuming to get the style and size consistent across each article. It's the sort of thing that would have been simple with decent distortion tools.

When I came to writing in the bad habits I wanted them to be easy to read. (After all this was the primary joke!) So I chose quite a large uppercase style which limited the width of the text. This meant I had to play around with the words a little and even swapped out the atmosphere joke for an Erich Von Daniken gag. Some might not get it, but if it makes them google his name then I figure I've enriched their lives a little.

Enjoy.