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10 Things We Learnt From Mad Legend Al Jaffee

Published

7 years ago

March 18, 2019

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Never One To Fold In

Mad legend Al Jaffee is the last Mad artist still around and here’s 10 things we learnt from an interview with him in Vanity Fair back in 2017…

Jaffee sees his role as a cartoonist in a very specific way: “I’m not an educator or a preacher. I think the important thing, in my line of work anyway, is that you’re helping the reader to think for himself.”
Even though he has drawn humour comics for decades, it isn’t just about making the reader laugh either: “It’s not just about getting a chuckle from them. When you expose hypocrisy or nonsense or plain ol’ stupidity, you want to do it in a way that makes the reader connect the dots. Don’t tell the joke, just hint at the joke. If you over-explain it, it’s no good.”
It is the fact that the material in Mad has always made people think that is one of the most important aspects of his career as a cartoonist, he revealed: “It’s not just about the references. What I always loved about the Fold-In is that it couldn’t be enjoyed passively. I don’t think people want to be lumps, letting you fill their heads with ideas. They want to participate.”
As the artist on the Fold-Ins, reader participation has always been key for him: “It needs that interaction. Most of our readers try to guess what it’ll be before they fold it in, and they work very hard at it, from what I’ve been told. My job is to make it impossible for them to guess in advance.”
Even though he has done these Fold-Ins for many years, he still manages to keep it fresh: “Because I never approach it as the same thing. I’m always thinking, can I surprise them again? Surprise is what creates a genuine laugh. I think I get the same joy in doing the Fold-In every month as people who love doing crossword puzzles week after week. A crossword is always the same general concept, but if it’s done well, it’s different and challenging. You never tire of using your brain.”
The Fold-In was intended as a one-off but it has outlasted many of the things it was designed to parody: “I was making fun of the fold-outs you’d see in Playboy or National Geographic or LifeMagazine. They had these big, fancy, full-color fold-outs. Well, at Mad we didn’t have that kind of budget. So I thought, wouldn’t it be funny to do the exact opposite? We’d do a cheap black-and-white fold in.”
In fact, he wasn’t sure that the publisher would go for it initially: “You’d have to ruin the magazine. But Bill Gaines, our publisher, really loved the idea. He said, “If they mutilate the magazine, they’ll buy a second one to save.” [Laughs] I always loved that logic.”
There has only been one Fold-In that he regrets drawing in his very long career: “I don’t want to name the exact event, but it was one of those terrible mass shootings. Where a gunman walks in and murders everybody. The Fold-In actually had a really positive message. It was along the lines of, well, let’s hope we never have to experience something this horrible ever again.”
He admits that life in the Mad offices was a lot less madcap and exciting than some people might imagine: “The truth of the matter is, it wasn’t all that interesting. Most of us were freelance artists, and time is money when you’re in freelance. We were very serious about it. Our motto was “Humor is no laughing matter.'”
In fact, it was when they were away from the office that inspiration struck: “Actually, some of the best, most inspired times I ever had with the other Mad contributors wasn’t at the office. It was when we’d go on these big group trips. Bill (Gaines) would take the entire staff on vacations, and we’d go all over the world. He took us to Greece, to the Soviet Union, to Thailand and on an African safari.”