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Profiled: Al Jaffee on the MAD Magazine Fold-Ins

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Alan Gardner July 18, 2014 1 minute 2 comments

Paste Magazine interviews the legendary Al Jaffee about his iconic Fold-Ins that appear in MAG Magazine.

The way it works is pretty much the way all freelance people work. The Richard Nixon Fold-In is the second fold-in. The first one was with Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher and Richard Burton. But the second one was not really supposed to happen, because I brought in the first one as a one-shot funny idea, with no concept whatsoever of it being a continuing feature. After the first one was published, a couple of weeks went by and the editor, Al Feldstein, came to me and said, ?Alright, where?s the second Fold-In?? And I said, ?Al, there is no second Fold-In. This is a one-time gag idea, and a second one would be old hat.? He said, ?No no, I like it. The kids like it, the people who read it like it. You gotta give me another one.?

The first one was very simple. The picture didn?t change very much. It was just a matter of someone on the right, when you folded the page, moved over to join people on the left. When Feldstein insisted that I come up with a second one, I realized that you can?t keep doing the same thing over and over again, where something on the right folds over and meets something on the left.

Via Tom Richmond