Al Jaffee
Al Jaffee was born March 13, 1921 in Savannah, Georgia. He fell in love with cartoons at an early age reading the Sunday funny papers with his father. His family eventually moved to New York City where he was chose to be in the first class of the High School of Music and Art. Many of the students in his classes became top artists and writers in the comic book world. His closest buddy was Will Elder who lived near him in the Bronx. John Severin, Alex Kotzky, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein (MAD's former editors) were all fellow students of his.
This was the time of the so-called "golden age" of comics. Superman and other heros were riding high when Al graduated from high school. It looked like a great opportunity for him except for one minor problem. Al had no idea of where muscles were located in the body. So, his only choice was to create someone who had no muscles at all. Thus Inferiorman was born. Humor was Al's strong suit but unfortunately humor didn't make it during this time of super hero popularity.
Al was a huge admirer of Will Eisner's comic supplement The Spirit. He felt the stories were not only well written and exciting, but were also laced with humor. He made an appointment with Eisner and was flabbergasted when he was hired on the spot to do Inferiorman as a filler in Military Comics.
Inferiorman did not set the world on fire and Al soon found himself a freelance cartoonist again. He heard that Timely Comics was looking for humor material and went to see Stan Lee. Stan was a very young man with an enormous work load. Al was in the proverbial right place at the right time. After one look at his portfolio Stan plucked a script out of the massive pile he had on his desk, threw it at Al and said, "if you do this right, you can do one every month."
The script, titled Squat Car Squad, was about two goofy cops. Stan liked Al's work and gave him free rein to write and draw continuing episodes. Soon, Stan suggested Al create an animal feature and Al came up with Silly Seal. Then Stan said, "give him a sidekick named Ziggy Pig," and zillions of these comics were sold during World War II.
After World War II Al returned to Timely Comics. He wrote and illustrated many humor based features. At one point Stan decided to put Al in charge of all humor and teenage comic books. Later, when all employees were released to become freelancers, Stan gave Al the Patsy Walker line of comic books to do on his own. Al wrote and illustrated two comic books every month for about five years and they were apparently well received. He was never privy to sales figures, but the never ending bags of fan mail told their own story.
Then came MAD magazine. Out of the blue, Harvey Kurtzman called Al to join the :usual gang of idiots" in the exciting new field of satirical cartooning. It was an invitation difficult for Al to resist, especially after five years of teenage trials and tribulations. Al spent a few years writing and selling scripts to MAD until associate editor Nick Meglin convinced everyone that these would be much funnier if Al illustrated them himself. And Al has been doing just that for over fifty years now.
Al created the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions feature for MAD and it eventually turned into over a dozen books that sold millions of copies. He also created the feature Hawks and Doves that allowed him to make his anti-war protests known.
And in 1964 Al came up with what he figured would be a one-shot gag that he called the MAD Fold-in. He's done over four hundred inside back cover Fold-ins so far and it's still going strong. It has become and remains one of the most popular features in the magazine.
