The best part of the fold-in was the comically cynical idea behind it that collectors of Mad Magazine had to ruin their issue to do the fold-in thus forcing them to buy another issue to keep in “mint condition”. Was a meta-satire on the collecting hobby that required collectors to not actually use and enjoy the collectible.
I remember ordering a few paperbacks from MAD Magazine when I was a kid. I just checked and it appears to have been Jaffe's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" series. From some strange reason, I can half-remember at least one cartoon; it was pure adolescent humour.
not MAD magazine, but a fold-in from the same time period, and with the same sense of humor. not entirely safe for work but I'd be surprised if anybody's offended:
I'd have a hard time exaggerating Mad Magazine's influence on my young mind. In particular, their cynical take on advertising pretty much is my view of it. For instance, if I see something like "'Hot New Game' is 'a thrill ride'", I assume they lopped off "...for kindergartners who scare too easily".
I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.
I think it falls in that category of stuff meant for kids but not dumbed down for kids.
This tends to be the absolute best content for young readers, because we all feel like we're hanging with the adults. Even better, with the funny and/or smart adults. It tends to elevate young people because that's when we're most desperate to be older/cooler/smarter/funnier.
Despite this being a huge part of a lot of people's lives, it always felt like you were in a club. You could get away with stealing jokes and delivering them at school without anyone catching on. You could copy the style of art from an issue and nobody was the wiser (I won an art contest in 6th grade with something very close to a MAD artist I no longer recall).
I don't know what the modern equivalent is. What's the barely-above-ground cultural lynchpin that sneaks a few kids into the late night comedy club now?
I remember being younger and reading highlights magazine, which had cool stuff like hidden pictures.
But then I "graduated" to mad magazine and couldn't go back. I also vaguely recall a magazine called cracked, but it was a poor knockoff in comparison.
Apart from the fold-in, I also remember Spy vs. Spy when I was younger and couldn't get all the in-jokes when they made fun of a current movie.
Wow. Respect for the guy with the longest career ever as a comics artist, think over 70 years in the game. He began his career in the comic book industry in the 1940s, working for publishers such as Timely Comics (which later became Marvel Comics) and DC Comics.
Jaffee began working for Mad magazine in 1955, and over the years, he became one of the most influential contributors to the magazine.
He created the famous "fold-in" feature for Mad magazine in 1964. The fold-in was a back cover feature that presented a seemingly innocuous image, which, when the page was folded, revealed a hidden message or image. RIP to a legend…
His signature was all over the magazine (not just the fold-in) when I was a reader in the 70s and early 80s, when he was in his 50s. To think that he was learning from comics published when he was a kid in the 1920s and 1930s, drawn by artists born in the 1800s is amazing!
I loved Mad and Jaffee’s work when I was a kid. I was going through my grandmas attic once and I came across a stash of Mad Magazines from the 60’s which must have been my fathers or uncles.
Needless to say they had a ton of Jaffee work in them and I never felt so lucky as to come across that stash.
Just looking some Mad Magazine covers [1], some amazing drawings right there, those more realistic remembered me when the Ren & Stimpy cartoon put those freeze frames with detailed and often shocking images [2], Bob Esponja also did those. Wondering if those cartoons pick some of this style from Mad Magazine.
Never noticed this at the bottom of the obits before:
> How The Times decides who gets an obituary. If you made news in life, chances are your death is news, too. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects.
> “Some 155,000 people die between each day’s print version of The New York Times and the next — enough to fill Yankee Stadium three times over. On average, we publish obituaries on about three of them.” -- William McDonald, obituary editor
There are few things that will whoosh me back to my childhood critic-in-Ratatouille style faster than looking at a page of his artwork. Cheers, Al Jaffee.
I moved to the other side of the world 8,000miles / 13,000km away.
So I go into the public library and pick up a MAD Magazine one morning, and there in the letters section is my old GP from back home, writing in that he's been reading MAD since he was a kid.
I grew up in Germany (this was the 80s) and one way my dad encouraged us to learn English was subscriptions to various US magazines, one of them was Mad Magazine. We loved it even though we missed a few cultural references.
The fold in was great but I have to admit, every issue the "Fold back so A meets B" instructions somehow created the wrong image in my head and I'd go, "wait, fold which one where?". Over and over.
Used to take family vacations to a little cottage where the only entertainment was the Mad Magazine Board Game. Great material, loved the tone, just really fine work.
Saw his work also in Mad Brazil, which was a magazine mixing American and Brazilian artists. I grew up with Mad and still have a huge vintage collection.
I wonder if Mad also existed in other countries with local artists and language.
Yes, there were local versions! Sverre Helmer Christensen was a notorious Danish underground comic artist who I know got published in Norwegian MAD. My parents were friends of his parents, and I remember they bought that issue. I remember his parents as a mild-mannered couple, and I wonder how their oldest son turned out to be such an outrageous shock artist. Not that it appeared to phase them at all, they were very proud of him.
Sadly Sverre died of leukaemia at the age of 30, but I recently learned he was the main inspiration for my favourite current Norwegian underground comics artist, Jens K. Styve.
I think that of the different comics traditions that came out of the USA, MAD was one of the greatest and most influential outside it. It was also itself a lot more internationally inclined than the others. They knew and loved the Latin American newspaper comic tradition, and the French comic traditions, at a time when those weren't on many Americans' radars.
I think Australian Mad Magazine was lot of the American content with some local stuff mixed in (not sure who did the art for the local stuff - locals I assume but it seemed to match the style well enough from what I remember).
That man shaped a major chunk of my mindset, alongside George Carlin. I used to have MAD magazines strewn across my room. I loved the schticks where they mocked various movies, the criticism was almost wholly on-point
RIP Al. I had just bought the latest MAD "The Best of The Worst" a week or so ago, and am now compelled to read it.
As a litle kid I loved Mad magazine and Al Jaffee, even though it took me a long time to realize that each segment had an entirely different artist. I would look at the back cover without folding it to guess what was hiding there. RIP and Z"L.
[+] [-] CharlesW|2 years ago|reply
(Note the bottom copy before/after as well.)
[+] [-] nemo44x|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|2 years ago|reply
Some have used the title to refer to the OpenBSD FAQ. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tmux
RIP.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|2 years ago|reply
Oh! Is it supposed to be a fold-in? Hah. All work and no play.
[+] [-] latchkey|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsckboy|2 years ago|reply
1. https://i0.wp.com/cheapskatecafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011...
2. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVzZqXNX0AEaF0h.jpg
unfortunately, Land O Lakes has recently changed their packaging after 50+ years
[+] [-] kstrauser|2 years ago|reply
I love ya, Mad gang. Thank you for sneakily teaching this kid some critical thinking.
[+] [-] nkozyra|2 years ago|reply
This tends to be the absolute best content for young readers, because we all feel like we're hanging with the adults. Even better, with the funny and/or smart adults. It tends to elevate young people because that's when we're most desperate to be older/cooler/smarter/funnier.
Despite this being a huge part of a lot of people's lives, it always felt like you were in a club. You could get away with stealing jokes and delivering them at school without anyone catching on. You could copy the style of art from an issue and nobody was the wiser (I won an art contest in 6th grade with something very close to a MAD artist I no longer recall).
I don't know what the modern equivalent is. What's the barely-above-ground cultural lynchpin that sneaks a few kids into the late night comedy club now?
[+] [-] ipcress_file|2 years ago|reply
I know that it helped shape the cynic that I am.
Those guys were great.
[+] [-] m463|2 years ago|reply
But then I "graduated" to mad magazine and couldn't go back. I also vaguely recall a magazine called cracked, but it was a poor knockoff in comparison.
Apart from the fold-in, I also remember Spy vs. Spy when I was younger and couldn't get all the in-jokes when they made fun of a current movie.
[+] [-] tanseydavid|2 years ago|reply
And this was before I had any idea what the word "subversive" even meant.
[+] [-] xxr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singeezie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|2 years ago|reply
"Those magazines create a dangerous amount of laughter." -Marge Simpson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG_f0_jfHRU
"Wow. I'll never wash these eyes again." -Bart Simpson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlDDZkGONs
"Not Mad! That's our nation's largest mental illness themed humor magazine!" -Homer Simpson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zghcvq-pL7A
"So, we meet again, Mad Magazine." -Seymour Skinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MLa7WWwskg
[+] [-] ilamont|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemo44x|2 years ago|reply
Needless to say they had a ton of Jaffee work in them and I never felt so lucky as to come across that stash.
[+] [-] pentagrama|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?va=w&t=hk&q=mad+magazine+covers&iax=...
[2] https://renandstimpy.fandom.com/wiki/Gruesome_close-ups
[+] [-] jedberg|2 years ago|reply
> How The Times decides who gets an obituary. If you made news in life, chances are your death is news, too. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects.
> “Some 155,000 people die between each day’s print version of The New York Times and the next — enough to fill Yankee Stadium three times over. On average, we publish obituaries on about three of them.” -- William McDonald, obituary editor
[+] [-] hairofadog|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PostOnce|2 years ago|reply
So I go into the public library and pick up a MAD Magazine one morning, and there in the letters section is my old GP from back home, writing in that he's been reading MAD since he was a kid.
Small world.
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
He lists it as his first published paper: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.pdf
So the arguably most reknown computer scientist of all time got his start in Mad Magazine.
[+] [-] zwieback|2 years ago|reply
The fold in was great but I have to admit, every issue the "Fold back so A meets B" instructions somehow created the wrong image in my head and I'd go, "wait, fold which one where?". Over and over.
[+] [-] owlninja|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mherdeg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbelson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herdcall|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drukenemo|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if Mad also existed in other countries with local artists and language.
RIP Al Jaffee
Edit: found this https://madtrash.com/brazilian-mad/
[+] [-] vintermann|2 years ago|reply
Sadly Sverre died of leukaemia at the age of 30, but I recently learned he was the main inspiration for my favourite current Norwegian underground comics artist, Jens K. Styve.
I think that of the different comics traditions that came out of the USA, MAD was one of the greatest and most influential outside it. It was also itself a lot more internationally inclined than the others. They knew and loved the Latin American newspaper comic tradition, and the French comic traditions, at a time when those weren't on many Americans' radars.
[+] [-] jamesfinlayson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|2 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/pK6xE-9sdII
(5 minutes)
From the article:
https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al-jaf...
When I was a kid I always loved when I could get a hold of a mad magazine.
[+] [-] nemo44x|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmclnx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lightedman|2 years ago|reply
RIP Al. I had just bought the latest MAD "The Best of The Worst" a week or so ago, and am now compelled to read it.
[+] [-] dsq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakedata|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovaDudely|2 years ago|reply
Always loved the stories Dick Debartolo would dig up on 'The Giz Wiz' regarding William Gaines and occasionally Jaffee.