The Late Great Al Jaffee

Al Jaffee, the longest running contributor to Mad, died on April 10 2023 at the age of 102. Among other things, he was responsible for such Mad features as the Mad Fold-In and "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions." According to Guinness World Records, he holds the record for the longest career of any comic artist. While its longest running contributor, Al Jaffee always worked as a freelancer and was never on the staff of Mad.

Al Jaffee was born Abraham Jaffee on March 13 1921 in Savannah, Georgia. He spent part of his childhood in Zarasai, Lithuania, before returning to the United States to live with his father in Far Rockaway, New York. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York. He took up the name "Al" as a means of avoiding anti-Semitism during World War II. He served in the United States Army. During the war he worked as an art instructor at a rehabilitation centre and later at the Pentagon where he made posters and pamphlets as part of the war effort.

He began his career in comic books in 1942 with a parody of Superman called "Inferior Man" for Will Eisner's studio. The character in copies of  Military Comics, published by Quality Comics. That same year he worked on Joker Comics, a title published by would later become Marvel Comics. At what would become Marvel, he created the humour feature "Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal." Mr. Jaffee worked for what would become Marvel Comics following World War II.

It was in 1955, following its transition from a traditional comic book to a magazine format, that Al Jaffee's work first appeared in Mad. Al Jaffe also contributed to the magazines Trump and Humbug (both published in 1957), edited by Harvey Kurtzman, who had been the editor on Mad. From 1957 to 1963 he drew the comic strip Tall Tales for the New York Herald-Tribune. It was syndicated to over 100 newspapers. In the late Sixties and early Seventies he scripted the comic strips Debbie Deere and Jason.

From April 1964 to April 2013, only one issue of Mad did not include new material created by Al Jaffee. He introduced the Mad Fold-In in 1964. His regular feature "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" also originated in Mad in the Sixties. He retired in 2020 at the age of 99.

Al Jaffee was an extraordinary talent. Throughout his work he consistently poked fun at the idiocy and incompetence with which one so often meets in life. These themes are particularly seen in his "Snappy Answers for Stupid Questions," but also in his Mad Fold-In. His work was not only filled with humour, but wit and sophistication as well. Quite simply, Al Jaffee was one of the great humorists of the 20th and 21st Centuries.