Al Jaffee, Iconic Mad Magazine ‘Fold-in’ Artist, Dies at 102
Al Jaffee #AlJaffee
Allan “Al” Jaffee, the longest tenured Mad Magazine artist of all-time, who became an icon with his legendary “Fold-in” art pieces in the back covers of issues of Mad for over 50 years, has passed away at the age of 102.
Born Abraham Jaffee to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, Jaffee and his three brothers spent their youth moving back and forth between New York City and Zarasai, Lithuania. He attended the High School of Music & Art in New York City in the late 1930s, sharing classes with some of the greatest comic book minds of the 20th century, like Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein and Will Elder. Jaffee’s first comic book work was released in 1942, working for both Quality Comics and Timely Comics (now Marvel Comics).
At Timely, Jaffee first worked with artist Dave Berg (they both became iconic Mad Magazine artists), and at the behest of Editor-in-Chief, Stan Lee, Jaffee invented both Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig for Krazy Komics #1. Jaffee recalled to Jim Amash in Alter Ego #35, “I created Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal from scratch. [editor-in-chief] Stan [Lee] said to me, ‘Create an animated-type character. Something different, something new.’ I searched around and thought, ‘I’ve never seen anyone do anything about a seal,’ so I made him the lead character. So I created ‘Silly Seal’. One day, Stan said to me, ‘Why don’t you give him a little friend of some sort?’ I had already created Ziggy Pig, who had his own little feature, so it was quite easy to combine them into one series. I said, ‘How about Ziggy Pig?’ Stan said, ‘Okay!’ I should add that, while I created Ziggy Pig, it was Stan who named him.”
After serving in the military during World War II (which is when Jaffee officially changed his name from Abraham to Allan. He had been going by A. Allen Jaffee at Marvel), Jaffee returned to Timely and picked up drawing Timely’s popular funny animals comics (including Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal). For a time in the late 1940s, Jaffee served as the editor in charge of Timely’s humor titles.
In 1955, Jaffee did his work for EC’s humor magazine, Mad, under the editorship of Harvey Kurtzman. This was right after Mad had become a magazine (Kurtzman had offers from other companies to do magazine work, so Gaines turned Mad into a magazine to keep Kurtzman). Kurtzman and Gaines continued to have conflicts, though, so Kurtzman soon left Mad and when he left, Jaffee went with him (as well as other artists). Kurtzman’s followup series, like Trump and Humbug, did not do as well.
Starting in 1957, Jaffee did the syndicated comic strip, Tall Tales, which he drew until 1963….
In 1958, Jaffee returned to Mad, under Kurtzman’s successor, Al Feldstein. He had worked for the series for a few years when he came up with the idea of the “Fold-In” in 1964. He recalled in the introduction to a collection of his art, “Playboy had a foldout of a beautiful woman in each issue, and Life Magazine had these large, striking foldouts in which they’d show how the earth began or the solar system or something on that order — some massive panorama. Many magazines were hopping on the bandwagon, offering similar full-color spreads to their readers. I noticed this and thought, what’s a good satirical comment on the trend? Then I figured, why not reverse it? If other magazines are doing these big, full-color foldouts, well, cheap old Mad should go completely the opposite way and do an ultra-modest black-and-white Fold-In!”
The Fold-In would be an image accompanied by a question, and when you folded the sides of the pages inward, you would see a new, hidden image, along with an answer for the question.
Speaking of the fold-ins, Jaffee explained, “I could do ten of these a day if the big picture didn’t have any connection with the answer. The tricky part is having a connection. In order for the copy to read correctly after it’s folded, there has to be a marriage of some sort.”
Jaffee’s Fold-Ins became a mainstay of Mad for the next fifty years. His Fold-ins have become a piece of pop culture iconography. He retired from Mad at age 99, with one final Fold-In that he had created years earlier to be published when he died, but instead he used it for his retirement issue…
Jaffee was survived by his children, Richard and Debbie, from his first wife, Ruth Ahlquist. His second wife, Joyce Revenson, passed away in 2020.