Legendary Mad cartoonist Al Jaffee passes away at 102
Legendary cartoonist Al Jaffee, who held the Guinness World Record (opens in new tab) for having the longest career as a comic artist, has passed away at the age of 102. Although he worked on many different titles over the course of an astonishing 77 year career, Jaffee was best known for his work on satirical magazine Mad, where he invented the title's famous "Fold-In" back page.
Jaffee was born on March 13, 1921, in Savannah, Georgia. His interest in comics began at an early age and by 21 he was already a working artist. He created the Superman parody Inferior Man (published in Quality's Military Comics) and worked on numerous titles published by Timely and Atlas - the two companies that would later evolve into Marvel Comics.
After a brief hiatus working as an artist for the military during World War II (where he also changed his name from Abraham to Allan, partly as a way to avoid antisemitism) he returned to comics, working under Stan Lee on Timely's teenage titles.
His long relationship with Mad began in 1955, but Jaffee decided to follow founding editor Harvey Kurtzman when he departed to launch Trump and Humbug. Jaffee worked on those titles for a couple of years, but when Humbug closed in 1958, he returned to Mad, where his work would come to define the magazine's tone and humor.
Arguably his greatest contribution to the title was in 1964, with the creation of the Mad Fold-in, an innovative feature on the back cover of the magazine. On first glance, the Fold-In would appear to be a straightfoward illustration with text, but when the page was folded in thirds, it would change into something different. A colourful butterfly, for instance, would transform into an image of Elvis singing. Often, these were used to
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