Magazine cartoons

CNN spotlights MAD Magazine’s Al Jaffee

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Alan Gardner December 5, 2011 1 minute 3 comments

CNN profiles the career of MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee.

Today Jaffee, who will be 91 in March, is known for his own contraptions, many designed during his long relationship with Mad magazine. There’s the Mad Fold-in, the magazine’s inside back page, which cleverly turns one Jaffee work into another by folding one portion over another. There’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” in which a humdrum question leads to several unexpected sarcasms.

And then there are his sketches of “Mad inventions,” including an airbag suit and an improved beverage can. Some of them, like a smokeless ashtray or a multiroll toilet paper dispenser, have come to pass — much to Jaffee’s amusement. He’s been a primary contributor to Mad for more than 50 years, one of the chief purveyors of the humor that has shaped everything from “Airplane!” to The Onion to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” (Mad is a unit of DC Comics, which — like CNN — is a part of Time Warner.)

Amazing career.