Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, best known for his "Mad Fold-In" and "Al Jaffee's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," passed away on Monday in Manhattan. He was 102 years old and holds the Guinness World Record for longest working career for a cartoonist.
The reaction on social media was immediate. Many people, cartoonists and fans, posted remembrances and most posted selfies of them and Al. Al was one of the nicest cartoonists around.
At a Society of Illustrators get-together a couple years ago, Al personally told me the story of the Mad Fold-In, which was a take-off on the then popular Playboy Fold-Out in form, and how it was gonna be a onetime thing but Mad editor Al Feldstein insisted it be a regular feature. It was for 55 years.
"Conceived of as the satirical inverse of the expensive-to-produce, 4-color centerfolds that were a staple of glossier mags, the first Fold-In spoofed public perception of actress Elizabeth Taylor as a man-eater. Jaffee had figured it as a one-issue gag, but editor Al Feldstein had other ideas, demanding an immediate follow up for the June 1964 issue.
"Jaffee obliged with the Richard Nixon Fold-in, which set the tone for the other 450 he has hand rendered in subsequent issues.
"For those who made it to adulthood without the singular pleasure of creasing Mad‘s back cover, you can digitally fold-in a few samples using this nifty interactive feature, courtesy of The New York Times."
More at 13th Dimension.
"His Mad work was republished in countless books, many with self-deprecating titles like 'Mad’s Vastly Overrated Al Jaffee.' In 2008, Harry N. Abrams published a collection of his 'Tall Tales' strips. In 2011, Chronicle Books came out with 'The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010,' a hardcover boxed set.
"The impact of Mr. Jaffee’s fold-in gimmick was evident in many imitations and homages over the years, like Beck’s fold-in-themed video of his song 'Girl' in 2005. Mr. Jaffee said he would often receive requests from high schools that wanted to create a fold-in for the school paper, mistakenly thinking they needed his permission.
"'I write back and say, You have my blessings, go ahead and do it,' he said in 2008. 'But no one can copyright folding a piece of paper.'"
As a kid, I read and reread my Mad Magazines and mutilated my copies what with folding and refolding his Fold-In. He did a lot of work during his record-breaking career. This two page multi-panel cartoon, which my friend New Yorker cartoonist Robert Leighton posted on his Facebook, was a particular favorite:
His Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions was also a regular feature.
From The New York Times:
"Almost as long-lived as the fold-in was 'Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,' a running compendium of the kind of retorts that people are never quite quick enough or brave enough to toss off in the heat of the moment 'Is it okay to smoke?' asks a man sitting directly under a no-smoking sign in an office. 'Yes,' answers the receptionist, 'the signs don’t apply to illiterates.'"
"He described his mother as an eccentric who missed the old country and was dismayed that her husband worked on the Sabbath. When Mr. Jaffee was 6, she uprooted him and his three younger brothers, taking them back to her childhood shtetl in Zarasai, Lithuania. Their father stayed behind.
"The young Mr. Jaffee found himself in a world of mud streets and horse-drawn wagons. He learned Yiddish and won over the local children by drawing comic-strip characters, sometimes with a stick in the dirt when paper was unavailable.
"The instability of his childhood years encouraged in Mr. Jaffee a lifelong suspicion of authority that helped shape the Mad magazine ethos. 'I became aware that I could not trust adults,' he said. 'My father let me be schlepped to Europe. My mother did the schlepping. . . . I developed my own brand of anti-adultism.'
"In the 2010 biography 'Al Jaffee’s Mad Life' by Mary-Lou Weisman (with illustrations by Mr. Jaffee), he recalled a childhood not only of poverty, hunger, antisemitism and maternal neglect, but also of adventure and resourcefulness. He and his brother Harry designed and made their own toys. Some of their contraptions, such as a stick fitted with a wire hook and basket for stealing fruit from orchards, presage the crazy inventions he came up with in Mad.
"After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Mr. Jaffee’s father reappeared in Zarasai to take the children to America. Their mother remained in the shtetl, and Mr. Jaffee never saw her again. He said she was probably killed in the Holocaust along with most of the town’s Jews."
Moving to New York City, Jaffee was accepted into the High School of Music & Art. During his World War Two service, he created drawings to help shell-shocked soldiers.
During the "Golden Age" of comics, Jaffee created "Inferior Man," a parody of Superman. He joined former High School of Music & Art friends Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman, drawing for EC Comics' Mad, a then-new parody publication.
Al Jaffee and classmate (and fellow Mad contributor) Will Elder in the High School of Music & Art lunch room.
"Three years ago, Jaffee had a snappy answer to my stupidest question: 'Are you proud that your work with Mad endures?' Jaffee’s smart reply: 'I would be stupid to say, 'No.'
"And when I asked him how he had stayed so inspired for so long, Jaffee told me: 'I guess I’m childish in a way. I’m living the life I wanted all along, which was to make people think and laugh.'
"But don’t tell the Mad editors that, he said after an expert comic beat, or 'they’ll stop paying me.'"
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