Al Jaffee began writing and drawing professionally in 1940, after graduating from the High School of Music & Art in New York City. He first worked for Stan Lee at Timely (now Marvel) Comics. Before his lifetime career at Mad magazine, Jaffee worked on the Hugh Hefner–published Trump, and with fellow creators Harvey Kurtzman, Arnold Roth, and Will Elder, published and contributed to Humbug. When Humbug folded in 1958, Jaffee was asked back to MAD by editor Al Feldstein. Jaffee’s trademark feature, the Fold-In, was intended as a one-time gag for the magazine, but publisher William Gaines loved it, and it quickly became one of its most popular features. Jaffee is still producing the Fold-In for MAD, and to date has created more than four hundred. Other features for MAD Jaffee created include Hawks & Doves, and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, which Jaffee still contributes.
In addition to his work at MAD, Jaffee wrote and drew “Tall Tales,” a wordless comic feature that ran in the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate from 1957 to 1963. More than five dozen books of original material and reprints of his work have been published. Jaffee has contributed illustrations to Playboy, Esquire, and Wired magazines, several national advertising campaigns, and has drawn covers for Batman and Superman comic books.
Awards include the Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist/Writer in 2001, four category Harvey Awards; the Reuben, the highest award from the National Cartoonist’s Society, as 2007’s Cartoonist of the Year; the Sergio from the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS); and the Inkpot from San Diego Comic Con. In 2013, he was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, and in 2014, the Society of Illustrator’s Hall of Fame. A collection of the best of the Tall Tales cartoons was published in 2008, and in the same year, Humbug’s eleven-issue run was published in a two-volume boxed set with a cover illustration by Jaffee. 2010 saw the publication of Al Jaffee’s biography, Al Jaffee’s Mad Life; and the four-volume, boxed Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964 to 2010.
