Interview with MAD's Al Jaffee

CNet's Seth Rosenblatt interviews Al Jaffee, the MAD Magazine legend who created "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and the back-page Fold-In, and mentions the mouth-watering Fold-In complete boxed set books, woah.

How do you make a Fold-In? Do you use a computer? We could see it being complicated.

Al Jaffee: I don't do anything digitally. Although, if I was much younger and could work with Photoshop, it would cut my time drastically. I paint in gouache and watercolor, and you can't easily paint over in watercolor. So I have to pretty much nail everything down mentally. I've been doing this so long that I don't even bother with color sketches; I can visualize the colors throughout.

I do a lot of preliminary sketches, and the one I just did for next issue took 10 times the number of usual sketches. They're done roughly on 8.5-inch by 11-inch bond paper. Then when a final sketch is approved [by editorial] I go to work and do the painting.

In pencil, I draw the answer first, which is half a page vertically, then I put a sheet of tracing paper over it and draw the middle. Then I put it on an illustration board and trace it. After I finish the board, I don't see a final copy until I get the magazine. The editors scan it in and make minor corrections digitally. They send a digital version to the printer.

This particular one didn't take me as long as others have, because a lot of it is typesetting. And I only had one figure in the middle of it. But the usual time is about a week for the artwork, and then I have to do the copy.

Al Jaffee: Snappy answers to (not) stupid questions

• [Stefan Jones]

  Jaffee is still recognizable as the caricature version of himself that appears in many of his features.

  Carry on you mad talented wonder! You’ve entertained me almost literally all my life; my dad brought home MAD back when I was five or six (1966 / 1967).

• [niktemadur]

  It kinda looks as if you do the fold-in, it’s gonna be goatse.

  • [awjt]

    And the laptop’s “pear” looks more like a “pair”

• [hifax6]

  I wonder what creature would turned up if you fold the image following simple origami rules rather than just  A to B ;P

  • [Just_Ok]

    i was always pretty good at making origami coral rocks 

    • [hifax6]

      Did they bounce or stick?

• [Kurt Benbenek]

  Though I personally never took his advice on smoking cigarettes, Jaffee’s scathing MAD pieces regarding the horrors of smoking still reverberate in my head. Jaffee used every visual and comedic trick to convince readers not to take up the nasty habit – sadly, I heeded him not (but gave up finally)

  As a devoted MAD reader and collector, the most frustrating part in collecting is finding MAD issues without the FOLD-INS folded in.

  • [planettom]

     I was just thinking that — that’s there’s something fiendishly hilarious that, there must be MAD collectors who want the old issues in mint condition, but, pretty much the first rule of enjoying MAD Magazine is you have to fold the back cover!

• [gwailo_joe]

  91?!  That happy #*%^er looks Great!  Wow…he looks better than I’ll look in TEN!  AND I’M NOT 81!

  If ever you should heed his good words about smoking…-coughcough-… let that be a lesson to you!

  edit: my previous post was based mostly on my fear of mortality and an excess of intoxicants; but it did not keep me from ordering this excellent volume…very pleased with the printing: it’s mighty…

• [terrycarroll]

  Don’t tell your advertisers, but this is the first time I’ve ever clicked right through on something from BoingBoing and hit “purchase with OneClick.” My wife’s 52nd birthday is in two weeks. This box set will be perfect for her brilliantly juvenile mind! (e.g.: She only knows 1960s & ’70s movie titles by their Mad Magazine form.) Thanks for making me that much more a perfect husband on May 7th!

• [Senor Schaffer]

  WTF is the answer to the fold-in? 

  • [Hanglyman]

     Privacy. The first letters of the logos on the left spell it going from top to bottom, and it looks like the bench turns into a laptop computer with a staring eye peering out of the screen when folded.

    • [B E Pratt]

       Hum, looks a bit more like a bed than a laptop (?)

  • [Itsumishi]

    It’s in the linked article.

  • [Just_Ok]

    now I’ve got two creases in my monitor.

    • [Ultan]

       MAD fold-ins are the other thing it’s hard to get on the internet.

  • [princessalex]

     If you read the article, you’ll find the answer.  :-)

    http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/04/17/MAD-Magazine-515-Foldin-2.jpg

  • [Kimmo]

    Strange nobody’s put it up yet.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Even stranger that you could just read the unfolded one.from top to bottom to see the answer.

• [Ed Ligget. Tuba.]

  I had a bunch of Mad digest books when I was a kid and Al Jaffee’s Snappy Comebacks to Stupid Questions was one of them.  The funniest part was one of the testimonials from another writer that said, “I can say in all honesty that this is, perhaps, the only book that Al Jaffee has ever written.”  AHAHAH priceless!

• [Jesse Nikolic]

  The All… Ighty… Ollar?

• [dasanjos]

  (Spoiler Alert) Here’s the folded fold-in :)

• [LikesTurtles]

  The fold-in was always one of my favorite features of Mad Magazine as a kid.  I tried to come up with my own… the reveal always ended up being “Space Alien” or “Star Wars Woman”. If only I knew back then about Jaffee’s trick of doing the solution first, I could have made something actually funny (or just would have ended up with the clue being “Space Alien” or “Star Wars Woman” instead of the solution).

• [Luke Temple Walsh]

  I ruined my monitor folding it to see what Al’s comment in the fold in was.