Almanac of Story Tellers: Al Jaffee

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 13th

 ___________________________________________________________________________

    It is the 72nd day of the year, leaving 293 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1921, the cartoonist Al Jaffee was born in Savannah, Ga.

    Jaffee spent the vast majority of his career -- from 1955 to 2020, retiring a few months past his 99th birthday -- writing and drawing for Mad Magazine.

    His longest lasting achievement, and his greatest contribution to the art of story telling, was the Mad fold-in. It always -- and I mean, always -- appeared on the inside of the back page of the satirical monthly magazine that was aimed at the adolescent mind.

    In the book, Inside Mad, fellow artist/writer Desmond Devlin called Jaffee irreplaceable, saying he epitomized the magazine. 

Smart but silly. angry but understanding, sophisticated but gross, upbeat but hopeless. ... He's uncommonly interested in figuring out how things work, and exasperated because things never work. 

    Jaffee also created the feature, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, which gave readers three choices in how to respond to a variety of inane, pointless questions. He published several books of compilations of his work.

    He started working in 1942, and in 2016, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded him the title of "longest career as a comic artist." He has won numerous real awards, including the 2008 Reuben Award from the National Cortoonists Soceiety. Fellow cartoonist Sergio Aragones said he can "take every branch of cartooning and make it better."

    But it was the fold-in -- Jaffee's tongue-in-cheek response to the "fold-out" in glossy men's magazines such as Playboy -- that was his signature art. He created some 450 of them, only missing two issues between 1964-2019. He drew them all by hand.

    The fold-in would show a cartoon that was elaborately drawn and verbosely captioned. The reader then would fold the two sides inward to reveal a hidden picture and succinct caption that commented on politics, culture, celebrities, the news, sports, the entertainment world, or anything in between.  

    First he would draw the gag cartoon, then cut it in half, and fill in the middle. He said he never saw the completed fold-in until it appeared in the magazine. 

    Jaffee still lives in New York City.