Posted on 04/11/2023 8:19:04 AM PDT by Morgana
The award-winning Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee has died at the age of 102.
Jaffee died on Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99.
Mad magazine, with its wry, sometimes pointed send-ups of politics and culture, was essential reading for teens and preteens during the baby-boom era and an inspiration for countless future comedians.
Few of the magazine's self-billed 'Usual Gang of Idiots' contributed as much — and as dependably — as the impish, bearded cartoonist.
For decades, virtually every issue featured new material by Jaffee. His collected Fold-Ins, taking on everyone in his unmistakably broad visual style from the Beatles to TMZ, was enough for a four-volume box set published in 2011.
The premise, originally a spoof of the old Sports Illustrated and Playboy magazine foldouts, was that you started with a full-page drawing and question on top, folded two designated points toward the middle and produced a new and surprising image, along with the answer.
The Fold-In was supposed to be a onetime gag, tried out in 1964 when Jaffee satirized the biggest celebrity news of the time: Elizabeth Taylor dumping her husband, Eddie Fisher, in favor of Cleopatra costar Richard Burton.
Jaffee first showed Taylor and Burton arm in arm on one side of the picture, and on the opposite side a young, handsome man being held back by a policeman.
Fold the picture in and Taylor and the young man are kissing.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Man, haven’t heard that name in DECADES! Used to love his art in the magazine.
Mad Magazine is one of those truly innovative American originals I greatly enjoyed in my youth.
R.I.P Al Jaffee and thank you for helping to brighten our lives for so long !
Mad Magazine gave me hours of entertainment in my formative Tweens years in the mid 1960s.
I don't know for certain this is one of Al's cartoons, but this Mad Magazine "You're a Genius If...But You're an Idiot If..." cartoons is one of my all-time favorites:
It did seem strange that you could still see Jaffee cartoons in the magazine about 50 years after his glory days.
I saw a copy of Mad a few years back. It was a lot dumber and emptier than it was in the Sixties. It was printed on better paper and cost about 200 times as much as a copy did back then.
And Mad hated Trump. Surprising since his comment about Pete Buttigieg and Alfred E. Newman did more than anyone or anything else in the last 50 years (except maybe the TV show in the 90s) to remind people that the magazine still existed.
What? Me worry? I read Mad!
LOL
Mad Magazine and Cracked were almost required reading when I was a kid, Spy vs. Spy especially.
Ukraine trusting the Clinton administration.
I remember their movie spoofs. Really funny stuff.
Anyone remember the song It’s a Gas? I came in a magazine issue as a 45rpm record.
Will he be folded into his grave?....................
Love Mad as a kid - all my friends did as well.
RIP 🙏
I slapped an Alfred E. Neuman ‘What, Me Worry?’ bumper sticker on our 1963 Mercury Monterey. My parents tolerated it, and it stayed on for maybe a year, the rain and sun eventually did it in.
I would copy the art work style from the magazines. I liked Mad.
I’ve been sort of watching him over the past few years, knowing he was still around.
The fold-ins where great, but I really liked his “Snappy answers to stupid questions”. Including, on occasion, “Stinging comebacks to snappy answers to stupid questions.”
I remember and there was also “she got a nose job”.
When my friends talk about what comic books they read as a kid I point out that I was reading social and political satire and coverage of international espionage. Occasionally one will get the joke and say “espionage? Do you mean Spy vs. Spy?”<p
.
There are still some movies I only know from their Mad Magazine versions.
.
I think Sergio Aragones is the only one left and he’s still working. Mad had some of greatest comic book artists working for them .
RIP al jaffee
I used to buy mad at the grocery store when my mother was food shopping. I’d fold in the Jaffee back cover and then put it back on the shelf and buy a different copy because I didn’t want to ruin my issue’s resale value (which I never resold anyways)
A legend of my childhood has passed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.