The Ink Stained Wretch #250 8/19/26

Here we go with yet another of the diabolical, disorganized, and downright defective disasters that are these newsletters! This week we sketch an evil wizard, pay a visit to the Underworld, and announce our first 2027 workshop date...on with the ‘Wretch!

Click here if you are interested in this original sketch

I had to do one more “Lord of the Rings” sketch as I hadn’t yet done the late, great Sir Christopher Lee as the evil wizard Saruman. I drew him in a few panels in some of the MAD parodies of “The Hobbit” movies, but those were little more than cameos.

Lee led a very interesting life. He was an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force during World War II, climbed Mount Vesuvius while on leave in Naples three days before it erupted, had a 60 plus year career as an actor with many notable rolls including playing Count Dracula in seven Hammer horror films, one of the best Bond villains ever as Scaramanga in “The Man with the Golden Gun”, Count Dooku in the Star Wars universe, and of course Saruman. That in no way is even a short list of highlights of his career on the stage and screen.

Interestingly enough, he is the only actor in the “Lord of the Rings” movies to have actually met J.R.R. Tolkien. They met by chance in an Oxford pub in the mid 1950s. Lee has said he was so starstruck he barely said anything to Tolkien.

Here’s one I did of Lee as Dracula years ago:

MAD #601 is out and it contains Desmond Devlin and my four page parody of “The Devil Wears Prada” (both 1 and 2). The two page spread that makes up pages 2 and 3 of the spoof is a real hell-raising scene:

Get it? “The Devil Wears Prada” gang go to hell and meet the devil! I’d show you the rest of the spoof but what do you think this is... a furshlugginer library?!? Go out and buy a copy, you clod!

I’ve booked my first workshop for 2027, taking place Jan 30-31st in sunny San Diego! No cosplay allowed! As always, you lucky subscribers are hearing about it here first. I’ll be announcing it later this week to the rest of the interwebs.

That’s it for this week’s “Ink Stained Wretch”! As always, if you liked what you saw please share it with others. Remember I’m always looking for feedback, questions for the mailbag, and suggestions for future Sketch o’the Week subjects. Just reply to this email with any of the above! And always remember... it’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!