Al Jaffee

Allan Jaffee was an American cartoonist. He was known for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. Jaffee was a regular contributor to the magazine for 65 years and is its longest-running contributor. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, "Serious people my age are dead."
With a career running from 1942 until 2020, Jaffee holds the Guinness World Record for having the longest career as a comic artist.
In the half-century between April 1964 and April 2013, only one issue of Mad was published without containing new material by Jaffee.
In 2008, Jaffee was honored by the Reuben Awards as the Cartoonist of the Year. Cartoonist Arnold Roth of The New Yorker said, "Al Jaffee is one of the great cartoonists of our time." Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz wrote, "Al can cartoon anything."

Early life

Al Jaffee was born March 13, 1921, in Savannah, Georgia, to Mildred and Morris Jaffee, the eldest of four sons. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Zarasai, Lithuania. His mother was described as devoutly religious, to the point she had the crucifixes removed from the hospital room before giving birth.
In 1927, Mildred took her four sons, with Morris's consent, back to Zarasai. After a year, Morris took the family back to the United States. After another year, Mildred took the children back to Lithuania, where they lived in a shtetl. With reading material scarce in his new home, Morris mailed comic-strip clippings from the United States. Jaffee became known for his ability to trace figures like Little Orphan Annie in the sand, for the amusement of his friends as well as the local bullies. After four more years, Morris again took the eldest three sons back to the United States, where they lived in Far Rockaway, Queens. David, Jaffee's youngest brother, returned to U.S. in 1940, months before much of Zarasai's Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, including, apparently, Mildred herself.
Jaffee studied at the High School of Music & Art in New York City in the late 1930s, along with his brother Harry and future Mad personnel Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin, and Al Feldstein.
While Morris's perseverance probably saved his sons' lives, he later showed increasingly erratic behavior himself, thereby missing his son's high school graduation, and inexplicably discarding all his belongings and art projects once he left for the Army.
These experiences of perpetual absurdity and repeated alienation were later credited by his friends and wife as having sharpened his satirical edge, making him recognize that authority figures in his life could be oppressive and absurd, and quick to find nuances others miss, especially in the semantics of the English language.

Career

Jaffee began his career in 1942, working as a comic book artist for several publications, including Joker Comics, in which he was first published in December 1942, and continuing in other comics published by Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, the 1940s and 1950s precursors of Marvel Comics. While working alongside future Mad cartoonist Dave Berg, Jaffee created several humor features for Timely, including "Inferior Man" and "Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal".
Jaffee originally considered himself strictly an artist until he was disabused of the notion by editors and art directors who were reviewing his portfolio. "When prospective clients laughed and asked 'Who wrote the gag?' my response was 'I did, sir.' Which was very confusing since I didn't realize any writing had taken place. I mean, writers used typewriters, smoked pipes, wore scarves, right? When enough of them said, 'Oh, then you're a writer too,' I took their word for it. Who was I to argue with prospective employers?"
Jaffee served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he worked as an artist for the military in various capabilities. His work included the original floor plan for the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. During this time, he took advantage of the military's free name change service, first to "Alvin Jaffe" by mistake, then to "Allan Jaffee". While working at the Pentagon, he met Ruth Ahlquist, whom he married in 1945.
In 1946, Jaffee returned to civilian life, working for Stan Lee. For approximately a year and a half in the late 1940s, Jaffee was editing Timely's humor and teenage comics, including the Patsy Walker line.
Jaffee recalled in a 2004 interview:
From 1957 to 1963, Jaffee drew the elongated Tall Tales panel for the New York Herald Tribune, which was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. Jaffee credited its middling success with a pantomime format that was easy to sell abroad, but his higher-ups were unsatisfied with the strip's status: "The head of the syndicate, who was a certifiable idiot, said the reason it was not selling is we gotta put words in it. So, they made me put words in it. Immediately lost 28 foreign papers." A collection of Jaffee's Tall Tales strips was published in 2008. Jaffee also scripted the short-lived strips Debbie Deere and Jason in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since 1984, Jaffee has provided illustrations for "The Shpy", a lighthearted Jewish-themed adventure feature in Tzivos Hashem's bimonthly children's publication The Moshiach Times.

''Mad''

Jaffee first appeared in Mad in 1955, one issue after its transformation from comic book format to magazine. When editor Harvey Kurtzman left in a dispute three issues later, Jaffee went with Kurtzman. Jaffee contributed to Kurtzman's first two post-Mad publishing efforts, Trump and the creator-owned Humbug, though both were much less successful than Mad. In 2008, the first full reprint of Humbug was published as a two-volume set by Fantagraphics; the set includes a newly commissioned cover illustration by Jaffee, and a co-interview with Jaffee and Arnold Roth.
After Humbug folded in 1958, Jaffee brought his unpublished material to Mad, which bought the work. "Bill Gaines took out every Trump and Humbug," remembered Jaffee, "called me into his office, sat me down on the couch next to him, and went over every issue and said "Which is yours?" And as he came to each one, when he saw my stuff, he OK'd to hire me."

The Fold-In

In issue #86 of 1964, Jaffee created his longest-running Mad feature, the Fold-In. In each, a drawing is folded vertically and inward to reveal a new "hidden" picture. Originally, Jaffee intended it as a one-shot "cheap" satire of the triple foldouts that were appearing in glossy magazines such as Playboy, National Geographic, and Life. But Jaffee was asked to do a second installment, and soon the Fold-In became a recurring feature on the inside back cover of the magazine. In 2011, Jaffee reflected, "The thing that I got a kick out of was ... Jeopardy! showed a Fold-In and the contestants all came up with the word they were looking for, which was 'Fold-In.' So, I realized, I created an English language word."
In 2010, Jaffee described the earliest Fold-Ins:
The Fold-In became one of Mads signature features, and it appeared in almost every issue of the magazine from 1964 to 2020. A single issue in 1977 was published without a Fold-In, and a 1980 issue instead featured a unique double-visual gimmick by Jaffee in which the inside back cover and the outside back cover merged to create a third image when held up to the light. The third-ever Fold-In in 1964 featured a unique diagonal folding design, rather than the standard left-right vertical format. The image revealed the four members of The Beatles becoming bald.
In a Mad-like wrinkle, there are two answers to the question "When was Jaffee's last Fold-in?" The final one he designed appeared in the June 2019 issue. But his last Fold-in to be published, a personal farewell to readers, appeared in the August 2020 issue. Jaffee had prepared it six years in advance, to be published after his own death. Instead, it ran after he officially announced his retirement at the age of 99, as the conclusion of an "All Jaffee" tribute issue. Cartoonist Johnny Sampson succeeded Jaffee on the feature.
The Far Side creator Gary Larson described his experience with the Fold-In: "The dilemma was always this: Very slowly and carefully fold the back cover ... without creasing the page and quickly look at the joke. Jaffee's artistry before the folding was so amazing that I suspect I was not alone in not wanting to deface it in any way." In 1972, Jaffee received a Special Features Reuben Award for his Fold-Ins.
Jaffee used a computer only for typographic maneuvers to make certain Fold-In tricks easier to design and he typically took two weeks to sketch and finalize an image. Otherwise, all his work was done by hand. "I'm working on a hard, flat board ... I cannot fold it. That's why my planning has to be so correct." In 2008, Jaffee told one newspaper, "I never see the finished painting folded until it's printed in the magazine. I guess I have that kind of visual mind where I can see the two sides without actually putting them together." Contrasting current art techniques and Jaffee's approach, Mads art director, Sam Viviano, said, "I think part of the brilliance of the Fold-In is lost on the younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on a computer."

21st century

Until 2019, Jaffee continued to do the Fold-In for Mad, as well as additional artwork for articles. His last original Fold-In appeared in the June 2019 issue, which was one that had originally been rejected from the June 2013 issue due to sensitivity about gun violence. Since August 2019, Mad has been either reprinting old Fold-Ins or publishing new ones by Johnny Sampson. In December 2019, Al's original work was featured in the magazine for the last time. Mads oldest regular contributor, Jaffee's work appeared in 500 of the magazine's first 550 issues, a total unmatched by any other writer or artist. He said, "I work for a magazine that's essentially for young people, and to have them keep me going, I feel very lucky ... To use an old cliché, I'm like an old racehorse. When the other horses are running, I want to run too." He retains the record for being longest tenured contributor to the history of Mad magazine.
In August 2008, Jaffee was interviewed for an NY1 feature about his career. He said, "It astonishes me that I still am functioning at a fairly decent level. Because there were a lot of dark days, but you have to reinvent yourself. You get knocked down and you pick up yourself and you move on."
A four-volume hardcover boxed set, The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964–2010, was published by Chronicle Books in September 2011,.
Jaffee announced in June 2020 that he would be retiring. To honor this, Mad published a tribute issue that month.