Svengoolie® Artist Collection 2023
About Tom Richmond

Tom Richmond is a cartoonist and humorous illustrator who has been getting in trouble for his caricatures since the second grade, and getting paid for doing them for almost as long.

Tom discovered his love of caricature when he worked his way through art school drawing them during summers at a theme park near Chicago. Since then he’s been a freelance illustrator drawing for clients like Marvel and DC comics, VIZ, Cracked Magazine, GQ, Cartoon Network, National Geographic, Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, CNN, Warner Bros, and many, many more. He’s best known as one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” at MAD Magazine, where he has been illustrating their signature style (and lots of other stuff) in almost every issue since 2000. He’s the author of “The Mad Art of Caricature”, a book about the art of caricature and how to draw them. Most recently you may have seen his work in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, his key art for the CNN documentary-series “History of the Sitcom” and season 10 of “Impractical Jokers”, and of course this Svengoolie art!

Design Inspiration

"Every summer in the late 80’s I’d move from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area where I was gong to college down to Gurnee, Illinois, to work at a theme park caricature job. There I got introduced to Svengoolie on the local Chicago channels when the artists got together and watched the show. Years later I got assigned to do the art for a Svengoolie feature in a 2018 issue of MAD Magazine, and I thought “Hey! I remember this guy!” I was delighted to find out Svengoolie was now national on MeTV, and I've been enjoying the show back here in Minnesota ever since! I was delighted to be asked to do a piece for the 2023 “Artist’s Collection”. Ever since I was a kid I loved old sci-fi and monster movies, so I thought for my Svengoolie piece I’d do a MAD Magazine flavored spoof of a 1950’s era “Attack of the (insert giant monster name here)!” film, starring Sven and friends!"