Al Jaffee Gone

from The Los Angeles Times

Al Jaffee, iconoclastic cartooning legend of Mad Magazine fame, dies at 102

BY JESSICA GELT

LAMBIEK Comiclopedia

Al Jaffee, the iconoclastic cartoonist who created Mad Magazine’s most enduring feature — the Fold-In — and served as the publication’s longest-running contributor, died at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 102.

The cause was multiple-organ failure, his granddaughter Fani Thomson told the New York Times.

Jaffee’s illustrations first appeared in the legendary satiric magazine in 1955, shortly after it transitioned from a comic book to a magazine. In 1964, he created the “Fold-In,” a back-of-book feature that became an instant classic at a time when other magazines were championing the ubiquitous fold-out.

Jaffee’s idea involved folding a picture vertically inward to reveal a completely new image and caption. A fold-in from 1969 resulted in an image of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Linus folded in from a piece of abstract art. The caption read: “Modern Art has taken some pretty wild turns in recent years. But no matter which direction it takes, it seems to be headed more and more toward total incomprehensibility.”

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