Arsenic Lullaby - Mad Magazine character commission and problems with it's covers

I just finished up a commission featuring Alfred E Neuman, the Mad Magazine mascot. If you are under 30, you might not know who that is...it's this guy.

Now that I think about it, if you are under 30 you might not even know wtf Mad Magazine is...

...once upon a time EC comics who had been very successful publishing horror and crime comic books...saw that a huge backlash was underway against those type of comic books for possibly negatively affecting young minds...it was the precursor to the idiots who though heavy metal music would make you worship satan, and the idiots who worry that violent video games will drive you to murdering your friends and family.
SO...to keep their options open they began a humor magazine called MAD. and put all of their top talent to work making with the funny. when Mad Magazine first began and was stocked with some of the most talented illustrators to ever pick up a brush, their covers were whimsical, inventive and interesting. (well...this was 1955)

This cover here was done by Basil Wolverton (he's one of the all time great horror illustrators, remind me to tell you about him sometime)

Then a short time in they introduced a mascot ( Alfred) who was a stereotypical dopey looking...dope. Who would appear on the covers with a gag involving either the gap in his teeth, him being an idiot or a visual joke of some sort.

and somewhere along the lines Mad said "fuck it" to having any semblance of creative covers and just slapped Alfred on every fucking single one for about ( I shit you not) 40 years...

Hey look here he is but dressed as Batman...golly gee I can't stop laughing

Hey, he's dressed like the girls from the Shining...where do they come up with all these great ideas ( yawn)

Uh Oh the Incredibles movie is out...what ever will Mad do for a cover???

Halloween? Just slap Alfred on there but make him a Zombie...

...it was fucking pathetic. This was at one time the most respected humor magazine on earth, with the most talent and the most innovation.

While I was working there, doing my best to make at least ONE page in every issue funny ( like for instance this one below is one of mine)

I would from time to time, IN VAIN, suggest that MAYBE, since the cover is the most important part as far as getting new readers to pick it up...that MAYBE it's time we stopped just slapping a 40 year old mascot on the cover whether it is funny or not? maybe? hmm?

They didn't listen, and eventually sales tanked so bad they all got fired, last year and the whole magazine moved to California.

And I though FINALLY, a new editorial staff...maybe it'll have someone who actually gives a shit! Maybe they'll take the cover of the magazine seriously! nope.

ANYWAYS...the commission request was fun since I never actually drew Alfred for MAD. The theme was to be Alfred in hell, maybe with some ice water. I drew up a few possibilities.

He picked B and off I went.

first a little figuring out of the vanishing points for the refrigerator and where everyone would be, since the actual illustration would have wider dimensions than the sketch

Then the pencils

Then it's just ink, and ink, and ink...which is usually fun and mindless but the humidity has been all over the place this week. As I may have mentioned before, I ink with a brush ( sable hair) and humidity affects it. You can adjust to that somewhat, but when the humidity is 30% one day and 50% the next...it can really get frustrating and slow things down. (Remind me to complain about the quality of the brushes getting worse.)

anyways...here's some inking progress pictures

( this is a link to me inking some of this, can't figure out how to embed it so.. https://www.bitchute.com/video/jPf83FubIwe5/

and that's that...oh...no...one last thing. (almost forgot that middle guy's arm, haha.)

I guess it turned out okay. It's 11x17 inches. Not sure what that is in metric...2 meters by 168 kilograms? something like that? Hey...I'm American we measure things in inches, miles, and cheeseburgers. So actually this is about 7 cheeseburger wide by 4 cheeseburgers tall.

I'm only doing commissions until the end of this month, then I'll busy AF with other projects, so if you want one....now is the time to ask. You can use Steem or other crypto if you like. Prices range from 60 usd to 400 usd depending on the size and difficulty ( this one here'd be about 200 usd. )

the tags list on Steemit is generated by code...which puts tags up there based on ONLY popularity of use. You will notice that #comics does not exist there...yet. So I ASK THAT YOU USE #comics ON EVERY COMMENT YOU LEAVE ON MY BLOGS