Remembering Mad’s Al Jaffee
Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee who created the back-cover ‘Fold-In,’ one of the satirical publication’s most popular features, has died at the age of 102.
While other magazines had fold-out centerfolds, Al decided to go the other way and do a fold-in — the back page of the magazine looked like any other page but when you folded it into thirds, the illustrations and text turned into something totally different.
This video when he was 94 tells how the magazine beat the paranoid comic book censors of the puritanical 1950s and still survives today.
AL WAS A RASCAL
The magazine posted a tribute to Al Jaffee, with current and former staffers honoring him as a “humble and kind creator,” a “wholly creative soul,” and “at heart, a rascal.”
The world is and has always been a mess, which is why we need humor. As Al said, “I don’t think any race of people can survive without it.”
Al Jaffee’s Mad Magazine artwork has been published in a four-volume, hardcover boxed set, ‘The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964–2010.’
I loved Mad Magazine. Saving what coins I could, I would purchase it at the drugstore across from my school. I was more into the artwork than the stories, but soon put it all together and it became a book as important as any school issued to read. That monthly publication did in fact change the political and social world.
It sure did — and it kept me sane through some insane years.
Fantastic piece and video! My brother and I loved MAD magazine. Thank you for your piece