Since the launch of the satirical magazine in 1952, many comic luminaries have contributed to the sheer lunacy that is MAD. One such luminary, Al Jaffee, recently became MAD’s longest-running contributor after his more than six-decade run with the magazine. 

Born on March 13, 1921, Jaffee studied at the High School of Music & Art in New York City in the late 1930s, alongside future MAD personnel Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin, and Al Feldstein. He got his start in 1941 working as an artist for Marvel’s precursors, Timely and Atlas Comics. While at Timely, Jaffee co-created the humor features “Inferior Man” and “Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal.” During the war, Jaffee worked as an artist for the military, drafting the original floor plan for the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. While working at the Pentagon, Jaffee met his future wife Ruth Ahlquist. In 1946, Jaffee returned to Timely editing the publisher’s humor and teen comics, including Patsy Walker. 

Jaffee’s work first appeared in MAD in 1955, but he left shortly thereafter following editor Harvey Kurtzman’s exit. He contributed to Kurtzman’s humor magazines Trump and Humbug, before returning to MAD. For MAD #86, Jaffee created his longest-running feature, the Fold-In. When folded vertically, the image on the page would reveal a new “hidden” picture and caption. Among the earliest Fold-Ins were gags about the Elizabeth Taylor-Eddie Fisher-Richard Burton love triangle and The Beatles’ departure back to England. The Fold-In became one of Mad’s signature features, appearing in almost every issue of the magazine from 1964 to 2019. In the half-century between 1964 and 2013, only one issue was published without new material by Jaffee. 

Since its introduction, Fold-In subjects have also dealt with the 1970s gas shortage, revelations about the CIA bugging American citizens, Guitar Hero, teen pregnancy, and Jay Leno leaving The Tonight Show. Jaffee received a Special Features Reuben Award for his Fold-Ins and they were later collected into the books Fold This Book! and The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010. His last original Fold-In appeared in the June 2019 issue, with his final original work for the magazine coming in the December 2019 issue. Throughout his career with MAD, Jaffee’s work appeared in 500 of the magazine’s first 550 issues, a total unmatched by any other writer or artist.  

Along with winning several National Cartoonists Society Awards and being named Reuben Awards Cartoonist of the Year in 2008, Jaffee was also inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2013. Although he no longer produces original work for MAD, his legacy with the humor magazine will never be forgotten. Fellow Mad writer Desmond Devlin called Jaffee “the irreplaceable embodiment of Mad Magazine’s range,” with New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth praising Jaffee as “one of the great cartoonists of our time.”