Comic-Con 2010 is “in the books” as they say and it was it’s usual exhausting but fun time. This year I did a lot of new things including being on a panel about MAD and the new cartoon show and participating as a guest artist in “Quick Draw” with regulars Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw! and host Mark Evanier.

There was a lot of interest in the MAD show on Cartoon Network, premiering on Sept. 6th and featuring some of my artwork. Here is an interview with producer Peter Giradi and head writer and producer. Kevin Shinick… you will spot me once or twice at the WB signing we did and on the panel:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That was pretty cool. Kevin and Peter are creative and funny guys and they really “get” MAD, so I hope the show will really take off. There are a few short clips in the video but none of the stuff I worked on.

My “Quick Draw” appearance was especially fun. Basically it’s an entertaining show where fore mentioned cartoonists Sergio and Scott sit up on stage with one other guest cartoonist (in this case William Stout) and draw on boards with projectors so the entire audience can see what they are doing. They then do super fast drawings around themes and games that have the crowd roaring. Usually Mark has three guest artists come up and play a game for a short time, and this year he asked me to be one of the guests… naturally I was thrilled and of course got mercilessly paired with Sergio. The game we played was … well, just read Mark’s post about it.

Other than that I got to hang out with some super talented cartoonists, do a little drawing and signing and drink a lot of beer. Here are just a few pictures:

Hey! It’s Bart Man!

Hey! It’s the guy who created Bartman! Jeff Keane with The Simpsons’ Matt Groening

Thought this was a great costume… MAD Eye Moody!

Jeff Keane, R.C. Harvey and Stephen Pastis

From the WB Booth’s loft… the floor’s other end is literally too far to see.

MAD show writer/producer Kevin Shinick and MAD Magazine editor
John Ficarra hangin’ in the WB green room

MAD artist and art director Sam Viviano

I first send my work to MAD back in about 1990 and got a rejection letter at that time, but this is not it. As I recall it was in the form of a checklist that had different reasons for the rejection, and it had the same sort of irreverent humor. Sorry now I didn’t save that… it would have been fun to frame up in the studio.

This week’s sketch is of comedienne Stephanie Coutney AKA the goofy but still oddly attractive Flo from the Progressive commercials.

I’m afraid my Comic Con wrap-up will have to wait until Thursday… as usual any time away from the studio comes at a heavy price.

..jiggety jig. Flying back home from Comic-Con today… full wrap up tomorrow hopefully with lots of pictures.