Al Jaffee
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Al Jaffee (born March 13, 1921) is an American cartoonist who is best known for his work in MAD Magazine
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Jaffee began his career in 1941 working as a comic book artist for several publications, including Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, the 1940s and '50s precursors, respectively, of Marvel Comics. He created several humor features for Timely, including "Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal". For approximately a year and a half in the late 1940's, Al Jaffee was editing Timely's humor and teen age comics. He joined the "Usual Gang of Idiots" (as they call themselves) at MAD in 1955. In 1964 he created the MAD fold-in. The MAD fold-in, a feature in which a picture inside the back cover of the magazine is folded to reveal a new "hidden" picture (as well as a new caption), quickly became one of MAD's signature features and still appears in the magazine.
Jaffee has contributed to many MAD features both a writer and an artist. Some that he created include "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions", and several articles on inventions and gadgets in an elaborately detailed style. Many of these features he has expanded into stand-alone books.
Jaffee continues to do commercial artwork for advertising, and he illustrates children's books. MAD's oldest regular contributor, as of early 2007 Jaffee's work has appeared in at least 427 issues of the magazine, a total unmatched by any other writer or artist there.[1]
In 2005, the production company Motion Theory created a video for recording artist Beck's song "Girl" using Jaffee's MAD Magazine fold-ins as inspiration; Jaffee's name appears briefly in the video, on a television screen.
During the March 13, 2006 episode of his show The Colbert Report, on Jaffee's 85th birthday, comedian Stephen Colbert saluted the artist with a fold-in birthday cake. The cake featured the salutary message "Al, you have repeatedly shown artistry & care of great credit to your field." But when the center section of the cake was removed, the remainder read, "Al, you are old."
His work has earned him the National Cartoonists Society Advertising and Illustration Award for 1973, Special Features Award for 1971 and 1975, and Humor Comic Book Award for 1979.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Slaubaugh, Mike (2007-03-16). Mad Magazine Contributor Appearances (English). Retrieved on March 18, 2007.
[edit] External links
| Contributors to Mad "The Usual Gang of Idiots" |
| Editors |
|---|
| Jerry DeFuccio | Al Feldstein | John Ficarra | Harvey Kurtzman | Nick Meglin |
| Writers |
| Anthony Barbieri | Dick DeBartolo | Desmond Devlin | Stan Hart | Frank Jacobs | Tom Koch | Arnie Kogen | Barry Leibmann | Jay Lynch | Andrew J. Schwartzberg | Larry Siegel | Lou Silverstone | Mike Snider |
| Writer-Artists |
| Sergio Aragonés | Dave Berg | John Caldwell | Don Edwing | Al Jaffee | Don Martin | Paul Peter Porges | Antonio Prohías |
| Artists |
| Tom Bunk | Bob Clarke | Paul Coker, Jr. | Jack Davis | Mort Drucker | Will Elder | Drew Friedman | Bernard Krigstein | Peter Kuper | Hermann Mejia | Norman Mingo | Tom Richmond | Jack Rickard | John Severin | Angelo Torres | Rick Tulka | Sam Viviano | Basil Wolverton | Monte Wolverton | Wally Wood | George Woodbridge | Bill Wray |
| Photographers |
| Irving Schild |
| Related articles |
| Mad Magazine | William M. Gaines |
