Photo by David Folkman via NewsfromME.com

Back on Oct. 29th, The Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) had their annual gala dinner where they honor someone from the comic art world… this year’s honoree was the indefatigable and unfoldable Al Jaffee. I was not there to attend (gotta make it to one of those one of these days), so go to Mark Evanier‘s excellent blog to read all about it.

I knew this set was on the way, now it’s officially announced and available for pre-order. The complete collection of Al Jaffee fold-ins from 1964 through 2010. He’s still going strong, so it’s already missing the latest 2011 fold-ins, but would you rather wait until Al kicks the bucket?? He’s probably going to outlive me, so I’m excited about the books!

© 2010 MAD Magazine and E.C. Publications, used with permission

MAD #508 is hot off the presses and will be showing up in mailboxes and news stands soon… I’ll post a table of contents and some sneak peeks of my contribution to the issue when that date gets closer.

One thing readers will find in this latest issue is a call for some birthday love for the great Al Jaffee… he of the fold-ins, snappy answers and lots of other cartoony goodness over the last five decades or so in MAD. Al turns 90 on March 13th. Here’s what you’ll find in MAD #508 on the subject:

AL JAFFEE IS TURNING 90!

On March 13, long-time MAD writer/artist, creator of the Fold-In and Snappy Answers, and accused (but never convicted!) shoplifter Al Jaffee is going to be 90 freakin’ years old! To celebrate, we’re asking all fans (and enemies) to send in letters, cards, poems, drawings, paintings, sculptures, operettas, WHATEVER – so we can pass the love straight to Al! The sky’s the limit!

You can send your birthday wishes to:

The Big Jaffee
c/o MAD Magazine
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

The deadline is March 1st - so get crackin‘!

It’s important to keep in mind that Al is going to be 90 years old… that’s NINETY… NINE-ZERO… and as such, he doesn’t have a clue what an “email” is and he thinks an “Internet” is something you use to pull fish into your boat after catching them. Thus, please do not send e-mails or any digital well wishes because that’s not the idea. They want real, physical birthday wishes sent via physical delivery (and NO, this is not being sponsored by UPS… although they tried). I am thinking about sending him a box of Twinkies, since they are the only thing I can think of that has a shelf life as long as he apparently does.

So, send Al something that says you appreciate how he single-handedly ruined the mint condition of millions of copies of MAD with his furshlugginer fold-ins over the last 50 years, and kept us laughing doing it!

Here’s a great article in the Huffington Post on the legendary Al Jaffee.

A great article on a great cartoonist: Al Jaffe in the NY Times. Al’s getting a lot of press lately now that his book Al Jaffee’s MAD LIFE is now available… in fact you can order it here. My copy is on the way. Al Jaffee is one of the true geniuses of visual humor, and at 89 is still sharp as the proverbial tack and producing great work.

To say Al’s life has been “eventful” would be the ultimate stupid answer to a snappy question, if you’ll pardon the reversal. The article linked above touches briefly on what has been a life of epically colorful proportion… and I can’t wait to read his book which was illustrated by Al (of course) no doubt is equally epic color.

If I was in New York City this upcoming Wednesday, this is where I would be at 8:00 pm:

If you’ve ever laughed at Mad Magazine’s “Mad Fold-Ins” or “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” you’ve now got a rare opportunity to meet their creator, as comics legend Al Jaffee will be taking the stage with moderator Danny Fingeroth on December 9th at Columbia.

A graduate of New York’s High School of Music and Art, Jaffee worked as an editor, writer and artist for Stan Lee at Timely (later Marvel) Comics during the 1940s. In 1955, Jaffee joined “the Usual Gang of Idiots” at Mad Magazine, where he’s been a mainstay ever since, entertaining generations with his Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and Mad Fold-Ins.

Join Jaffee as he provides snappy answers to provocative questions about his art and life, including his new book, Tall Tales (Abrams) and his upcoming memoir on Wednesday, December 9 at 8 PM.

The event takes place in Room 501 at Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University in New York City. (Enter the Columbia Campus at Broadway and 116th Street. Schermerhorn Hall is close to Amsterdam Avenue, between 118th and 119th Streets.)

For more information, call 212-854-2581. The event is free and open to the public.

Via MediumatLarge.net

Like an idiot I forgot to post a big Happy 88th Birthday to MAD‘s Al Jaffee on the 13th of this month (incidentally, another long time MAD artist shares that same birthday, but Sam Viviano is a relative spring chicken at a mere 56 years old). Well, Al never blogs about my birthday, so maybe I don’t feel that bad about it.

For those who, like myself, are in awe not only of Al’s lifetime of fantastic work but that he’s still at the top of his game at 88, here’s some links to a great three part interview with Al by The Daily Crosshatch:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

If you print out the interviews and then fold part three so it meets part one, the secrets of the universe are revealed… or maybe it’s a recipe for chili.

I’m busy working on a few jobs right now, but here are some tidbits from the last week of interest around the interwebby:

Who Blotches the Watchmen Dept.

Fox, that’s who.

On Christmas Eve Judge Gary Allen Feess issued a ruling in favor of Fox in the rights dispute case over the new Watchmen movie that is supposed to premiere on March 3rd. Fox alleged that they owned the rights to produce and distribute a Watchmen movie, and that producer Larry Gordon was breaking a contract between himself and Fox guaranteeing those rights by producing the Zack Synder film and distributing it through Warner Bros. Fanboys the world over are scribbling in their secret journals and preparing to don trench coats, lift-shoes and ink blot masks seeking retribution (that’s a Watchmen reference, for you non-geeks).

According to this article on EW.com, Feess doesn’t seem to think much of Gordon’s honesty. Fox was apparently able to prove they did contact Warner Bros. prior to the film’s production in an effort to settle the matter, but were ignored. Gordon claimed he was “unable to remember” his agreement with Fox.

As bad as this might seem for fans of the graphic novel like myself who have been waiting for decades for a movie to be made, the article linked above is right when it points out this is actually a good thing overall. It means that the courts still protect the copyrights of studios and honor agreements properly. It benefits no one when these things are trampled underfoot. Do not fear, Watchmen rubes… the movie will come out. There is too much money to be made for WB not to settle with Fox and get Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach and co. on the silver screen this winter.

A Gang of Idiots Grows in Brooklyn

Actually they were from the Bronx, but who’s counting? Check out this awesome picture from the New York Times Magazine article “The Lives They Lived”:

Picture from the VandenBergh/Elder Family

That’s Al Jaffee and Will Elder having lunch in the cafeteria of their high school in 1939. The picture was part of an article remembering the lives of some notable folks who passed on in 2008 (Will’s gone but Al is still kickin’!). Did the other kids in that cafeteria have any idea that sitting among them were two of the most brilliant and innovative creative geniuses the world of cartooning and visual humor would ever see? No, they thought they were weirdos… that’s why they are all by themselves. If I had a time machine one of my stops would definitely be that cafeteria to have lunch with those guys. If you want to blow your mind even further, it is very likely the guy taking that picture was Harvey Kurtzman, another high school pal. That’s THREE of the most brilliant and innovative creative geniuses the world of cartooning and visual humor would ever see, in case you are counting.

The Apple Falls Far from the Tree Dept.

Last week Apple announced that next month’s Macworld Conference & Expo, happening Jan. 5th -9th in San Fransisco, CA, will be the last one they participate in and that CEO Steve Jobs will not be doing a keynote address there. The annual San Fransisco event has been considered THE major Mac tradeshow and has been going on since 1985. Apple cites “reduced need to appear at trade shows” as the reason for the decision. Apple Insider reports that “sources within Apple claim the move is strictly a matter of de-emphasizing the event and not the sign of any health problems that would keep Jobs from presenting a keynote.”

Personally I think that stinks of spin and a very bad business decision.

First off, the spin: regardless of their decision to not appear in future shows, there are only two reasons Steve Jobs won’t be delivering a keynote address THIS year:

1. He can’t
2. He won’t.

I don’t buy the latter. Why won’t he? He doesn’t have a few hours one afternoon to pimp his company’s newest products at a major trade show? It’s not the travel… he LIVES in San Fransisco! It’s not the preparation… he’s got thousands of employees who could prepare the entire address for him (somehow I don’t think Steve does his own multimedia presentation work). Nope, it’s because he can’t. His health has been a question mark for some time. I think it’s obvious it’s worse than Apple wants to admit and he couldn’t do the address without revealing that. Really that is neither here nor there anyway. Someday Apple will have to do business without Steve Jobs as their figurehead… they might as well get started. Let the man scale back and retire if he’s having health issues.

Second, the bad business decision. Maybe they feel they no longer need to do trade shows, with the proliferation of their Apple Stores and online presence, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. What has set Apple apart from Microsoft and hardware companies like Dell, etc. is their clinging to the image of the small market, personal chic brand. Even as they keep getting bigger and bigger market share, and as they dominate some markets like personal music players and smartphones, they have still insisted they are the laid back and cooler little brother who has the personal touch. Their entire ad campaigns are built around this notion. Removing themselves from personal interaction like trade shows will reinforce the growing perception that they are becoming another soulless corporate monstrosity. Considering the prices they expect people to pay for their products in order to keep their glossy white Apple Stores afloat, they shouldn’t have any qualms about spending a few bucks to keep the little personal interaction they still have with the masses and taking advantage of the publicity and buzz that surround the announcements they make at these large shows. Hundreds of live bloggers and maybe hundreds of thousands of consumers watching live? You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

If Apple keeps going down this path, they will become like Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory, with wonderful toys rolling out of the factory but out of touch with the consumer, or at least the consumer feeling out of touch with them. You have to wonder just how long the toys will stay wonderful if that happens.

Couldn’t resist this quick study of the great Al Jaffee for this week’s “Sketch o’the Week”.

The Pixie-ish Al Jaffee

Al Jaffee is a wonder.

If you are lucky enough to meet the man, you’ll see that at 87 he is as sharp as a razor, still has a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and is ever the consummate gentleman.

I met Al only once, at MAD holiday party a few years ago when he was still a little wet behind the ears at only 84. I had the fairly newly published book MAD ART under my arm and intended to accost any and all MAD artists at the party and beg them to sign my book on their particular entries. I approached Al a little timidly as he was deep in conversation with Paul Peter Porges, and anyone who has every been in “deep conversation” with Porges knows it is no small matter. I introduced myself during a lull in the exchange (I think Porges might have fallen off his chair or was similarly distracted), expecting an accommodating smile, a scribbled signature and perhaps a little small talk to be polite to a fellow MAD freelancer about 1,000 rungs farther down the later than he was.

To my surprise he instantly recognized my name, rattled off the names of a few of the jobs I’d done in the last year or two for MAD and told me he loved my work and thought I was a great addition to the magazine! I was thunderstruck, to be honest. He signed my book “To Tom, with Admiration, Al Jaffee”. Wow, that sort of made my decade.

The NY Times ran a big article on Al yesterday, which I heartily recommend reading. Although he’s know for his “Fold In” feature, he has been of far more importance than that for MAD for over forty years. People sometimes forget that he also wrote and illustrated some many hundreds of other articles including “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”, product parody stuff, Rube Goldberg-esque imaginary inventions and other contributions too numerous to mention and of surprising diversity. Sergio refers to Al as “The guy who can do anything”.

Al Jaffee is nominated for the National Cartoonists Society‘s Reuben award for “Cartoonist of the Year”, and as worthy as the competition is I hope he takes home the gold. He’s been a marvel for a long time, and hope fully for a long time to come.