[HN Gopher] Al Jaffee turns 100
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Al Jaffee turns 100
Author : drfuchs
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-03-15 01:50 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| tanseydavid wrote:
| I learned about Subculture from Mad Magazine and sarcasm from Al
| Jaffee's _Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions_
| eludwig wrote:
| Back in the late 60's and early 70's (born in late 50s) one of my
| fondest memories is walking or riding my bike (banana seat, of
| course!) down to the local 5 & 10 each month to get my copy of
| Mad Magazine. The fold-in would be the very first thing that I
| would do with a new copy.
|
| Al Jaffee is a national treasure and an excellent smart ass! He
| and the Mad gang taught me to question authority and make fun of
| the mighty. Also, while Al is a very gifted illustrator, his
| style always seemed approachable and very much inspired me to get
| into drawing. Guys like Mort Drucker were freakishly good and I
| knew instinctively that no one (or very few) could ever be that
| good, but Al's talent (and Don Martin probably as well) always
| seemed human and well-rounded to me. I totally loved the guy.
|
| I still have a stack of the old Mad paperbacks and "Snappy
| Answers to Stupid Questions" is still a favorite.
|
| Live long & prosper, Al!
|
| edit: removed silly possessive
| JSeymourATL wrote:
| > , noting that Jaffee was never on Mad's editorial staff: "I'd
| venture to say he also holds the title for longest-working
| freelancer, as well."
|
| Hilarious!
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/rwxPo
| wyldfire wrote:
| I have so much nostalgia for things like print magazines. "Mad"
| was great when I was young. Maybe I wouldn't enjoy it much
| anymore - it feels like the endless onslaught of memes and
| webcomics fill this slot for me.
|
| And yet, print magazines are still available. I will pick up a
| new issue of "2600" every once in a great while if I'm at a B&N
| and it catches my eye.
|
| Congratulations to Jaffee, and to "Mad".
| herodoturtle wrote:
| We emigrated when I was very young, and a Mad book was the very
| first English book I came to own as a young boy.
|
| I have no idea what it was called. It was around A5 or maybe A6
| in size, about 100 or so pages, and it was all about dungeons
| and executioners and prisoners.
|
| It was dark, silly, and once my English improved to the point
| where I could understand it, it was down right hilarious!
|
| Definitely shaped my sense of humour ^_^
|
| Congrats to Al on reaching this epic milestone.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > And yet, print magazines are still available.
|
| MAD ceased publishing in 2019.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Yes, sorry for being unclear. I meant print magazines in
| general. We've lost many but some still remain.
| rendall wrote:
| You weren't unclear
| techrat wrote:
| I have a copy of the Special "All Jaffee" Issue. The last
| issue to contain an original fold-in for Jaffee's retirement.
|
| It is dated August 2020.
|
| Pic: https://i.imgur.com/PGMqDGb.jpg
| herodoturtle wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| Please also share the fold-in? Unfolded and folded ^_^
|
| Yes I'm a random stranger asking you to do WORK on the
| internet, but it's worth a shot.
| techrat wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/business/media/al-
| jaffee-...
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Great article too ^_^
| zwieback wrote:
| I grew up in Germany but my parents subscribed to multiple US
| magazines to help us learn English. "Mad" was the one we always
| fought over. I didn't get a lot of the cultural references but
| still loved it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| An astute person in the Mad group on FB, mentioned recently that
| no one drew puke like Jaffee, with all the little unique chunks.
| :-D
| scrame wrote:
| my personal favorite: http://william-flew.com/mad/mo%204.jpg
| andyxor wrote:
| I'm surprised WaPo actually produces some interesting content
| besides political propaganda
| eric4smith wrote:
| Who can forget Al Jaffee's fold in's? Some issues were meh...
| Other issues were really fantastic.
|
| They were a part of my teen years on Jamaican bookshelves as I
| spent the money my dad gave me for lunch on each month's MAD
| magazine.
|
| Then as I moved to the USA back in the early nineties, they were
| still there, a bit harder to find, until it was rare to see them
| on the shelves anymore and you had to go to specific street-side
| magazine stands in NYC.
|
| Good to know Al is still out there!
| JacobAldridge wrote:
| For my 8th birthday I was gifted about $30 total from a few
| relatives, juuust enough (iirc) to buy an annual subscription
| to MAD Magazine. My mother talked me out of it (or basically
| told me I wasn't allowed).
|
| One of the very few regrets in my life.
|
| In due course, I'm very keen to teach my (toddler) daughter
| about money etc - but not at the expense of blowing some cash
| on childhood frivolities (especially ones that give joy for a
| whole year).
| bitwize wrote:
| I feel like Mad was great when Donald Knuth was contributing to
| it, but had begun to lose its touch when I got around to reading
| it. I thought it was hilarious at the time, but... I was 12 and
| the humor was ostensibly adult. Or rather it was old hippie humor
| from people who didn't understand social currents that arose
| since the 1960s, like video games and hip-hop... and didn't want
| to.
|
| Mad was at its best when doing pure gags and things like Snappy
| Answersto Stupid Questions and Spy vs Spy. And Al Jaffee was one
| of its funnier artists. I loved the Fold-Ins in particular, and
| they inspired me to design my own.
| xref wrote:
| Had no idea Knuth ever contributed, looks like he did just one
| time in 1957 when he was only 19?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measuremen...
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| Mad was great before it became Mad Magazine.
|
| The first 23 issues were insane stream-of-consciousness comic
| books. Anything you liked about the the tv show Police Squad or
| the movies Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc., was basically just
| early Mad. Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton at his
| manic best. Legends.
|
| The stuff you're talking about, the pure gags, the Spy vs.
| Spy... some of it was great, most of it was mediocre, but the
| main thing it did was let them make every magazine a digest.
| You could have a mix of new content and old every month.
|
| I vividly remember buying a copy of Mad Magazine in the early
| 90's that included one of their moronic movie spoofs. You know,
| carnival-style big head caricatures, everybody just has a new
| name that's a poop joke?
|
| In 1992, that spoof was of the movie Love Story, released in
| 1970. Half the jokes in the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions
| at that time were about key parties and leisure suits.
|
| That's why you perceived it as "old hippie humor from people
| who didn't understand social currents that arose since the
| 1960s, like video games and hip-hop... and didn't want to."
|
| They were just reprinting old content with a little new stuff
| sprinkled in.
| sstanfie wrote:
| Hey, he was one of main answers in today's NYT Sunday Crossword
| today. Probably coincidence.
| eganist wrote:
| > Hey, he was one of main answers in today's NYT Sunday
| Crossword today. Probably coincidence.
|
| For his hundredth birthday? Sounds less like a coincidence and
| more like a tribute.
| mikeryan wrote:
| I do The NY Times crossword every day. As stated it's very much
| not a coincidence. The puzzles tend to be timely. They also
| tend to build on each other so doing them regularly make the
| weekend puzzles more doable too.
|
| Note for anyone not familiar The NY Times crosswords build in
| difficulty through the week. Saturday is actually the most
| technically challenging. Sunday's is the biggest. Thursday's
| usually have some sort of trick you need to figure out like a
| rebus square (takes multiple letters in a single square) or
| answers that wrap around.
| groby_b wrote:
| Not a coincidence. It rarely is, the crosswords are chosen
| pretty deliberately. In general, if you want the back story to
| a crossword in the NYT, they have a column - in this case,
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2...
| drfuchs wrote:
| Pardon the "Snappy Answer...," but the NYTimes Sunday Crossword
| not only has Al Jaffee as the keystone theme answer, but all
| the other main answers are humorous inventions in his comics
| that in fact became reality years later. In particular:
| Automatic Redial on telephones (1961), Spell Checkers ('67),
| Snowboarding ('65), Three-blade razors ('79), and Graffiti-
| proof Buildings ('82).
|
| I haven't independently verified these, but I do recall other
| items that appeared as jokes in Mad, and later turned up for
| real: "Shpratz(sp?)", a spray to give your car the "new-car
| smell"; also an unnamed device that would keep your car from
| running if you weren't paying attention to the road (as
| depicted, for instance, because you were ogling someone you
| were passing on the sidewalk, though come to think of it, maybe
| it just snapped your head back to face forward).
| Grustaf wrote:
| When I was 11 I had already been collecting the Swedish edition
| of Mad for a while when I came across a copy of the American
| original. Back then they had a five year subscription option that
| I sprang for, so Mad Magazine really accompanied me from late
| childhood to early adulthood.
|
| My favourite was probably Don Martin and Sergio Aragones, but Al
| Jaffee would be a solid third. Art wise I think Harvey Kurtzmann
| is still hard to beat.
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(page generated 2021-03-15 23:03 UTC)