Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.
Today is Al Jaffee's 100th birthday, so I thought it would be fun to take a spotlight on Jaffee's historic fold-ins for Mad Magazine, which he did regularly from 1964-2019, with a final one published just last year as part of an Al Jaffee tribute issue celebrating his retirement at 99.
Okay, let's set the scene a bit (this is actually sort of a Foggy Ruins of Time, really). In the 1960s, the big glossy magazines like Life Magazine began doing these elaborate fold-out covers. Here's one from December 1960...
These became so popular that Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee had an idea. He explained, "I thought to myself... now it's folded in and I've got to have something on the left side here, and something right side here. And the only thing that popped into my head was that Elizabeth Taylor had just dumped Eddie Fisher and was carrying on with Richard Burton. So I had Elizabeth Taylor kissing Richard Burton, and a cop is holding the crowd back — and just for the fun of it I put Eddie Fisher being trampled by the crowd. What a cruel thing to do! And then, when you fold it in, she's moving on from Richard Burton and kissing the next guy in the crowd. It's so simplistic and silly and juvenile! And anyone could have done that!
I showed it to Al Feldstein, and the first thing I said was, 'Al, I've got this crazy idea, and you're not going to buy it, because it mutilates the magazine.' So I put it in front of him, and the thing about Al was, he liked things that intrigued him. The mechanics of it intrigued him. He said, 'You mean, you fold it, like this . . . ? And then . . . ?' He folded it, he unfolded it, he folded it, and then he said, 'I like this!' But I said, 'Al, it mutilates the magazine.' And he said, 'Well, I'll have to check it with Bill.' He takes it, runs it to Bill's office, and he was there a little while, and he comes back and he says, 'We're going to do it! You know what Bill said? Bill said, "So they mutilate the magazine, and then they'll buy another one to save!"'
Four or five weeks later, Al comes over to me and says, 'When are you going to do the next fold-in?' And I said, 'I don't have another fold-in. That was it!' So he said, 'Come on, you can come up with something else.' I wracked my brain, and the only thing I could come up with was Nixon [whose face was hidden within curtain folds]. That one really set the tone for what the cleverness of the fold-ins has to be. It couldn't just be bringing someone from the left to kiss someone on the right."
Here is the original fold-in. See how straightforward it is...
His second fold-in, which astutely predicted that Nixon WOULD, in fact, run for president again, was the first one to use the classic "Combine the two sides of the image to form a new image" (rather than just putting Taylor with the new guy)....
Jaffee explained the process of that first "classic" style fold-in to Paste Magazine, "The first thing I did was draw Richard Nixon’s face, not in great detail, just a very rough establishment of where the eyes, nose and mouth would be, and the general shape. I did an exaggerated caricature of Nixon and then I cut it in half, and moved it apart. Once the face was cut in half, it didn’t have the integrity of a face anymore — it was sort of a half of face. Then I looked at what the eyes were like, and I said, ‘what can I make out of the eyes?’ He had these heavy eyebrows. I played around with many things, but I had to keep in mind all the time what the big picture was. So there they (Goldwater and Rockefeller) were up on a stage somewhere, doing a debate, and I thought, ‘What kind of stage prop can I put alongside these guys that would seem natural there?’ I decided that I could make eyes out of the lamps, and as far as the nose was concerned, that could come out of the figures — their clothing. Then I figured the mouth; I could use some sort of table that could give me those two sides. That’s how it all came about. You have to have some kind of visual imagination to see the possibilities. I had to concentrate on stuff that looked natural on a stage."
The third fold-in tried an approach that Jaffee never used again, as it was really too complicated...
Starting with 1968's Mad #111, the fold-ins started to be done in color and they've been in color ever since. Here are a few examples from some anniversary issues, like Mad Magazine #300...
and Mad Magazine #400....
Jaffee missed some issues here and there (and Mad had some issues that did not have a fold-in because there was some other special gimmick for that issue), but for the most part, he appeared in every issue of Mad from 1964 until his retirement at age 99. That's pretty nuts, right?
Jaffee created a special fold-in that he initially intended on being published after his death, but because he just kept going, he instead decided to release it after his retirement in a special Al Jaffee tribute issue in the 14th issue of the current volume of Mad. Here it is. It's pretty freaking sweet...
Over the years, the joke has been whenever someone wished Jaffee a happy birthday, he would have a snappy comeback at them (likely a reference to his famous feature, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions), so I'm sure he would have a nice comeback to our celebration here! But I'll say it anyways, happy birthday, Al!
If anyone has an idea for an interesting piece of comic book history, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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