50 Years Of Mad Fold-Ins

[tgb]

Al Jaffee still going strong at 92.

Some good news about an old fart for a change.

[Teggy]

I bet its hard to find a lot of mint condition old issues because of those things.

[Kraken]

Heck, it was hard to find newsstand copies that hadn't already been folded.

[LawBeefaroni]

I bet its hard to find a lot of mint condition old issues because of those things.

I knew a kid that got two copies of every issue, one for folding and one for...collecting I guess.


Doesn't appear to be a huge dearth or premium though.

[Daehawk]

The fold in in the back and the spy vs spy were my favorite parts of my MAD magazines.

[Isgrimnur]

Got $12?

[YellowKing]

So awesome to see him still going. I had no idea.

Those were also my favorite parts of Mad magazine. I remember every time I went to the store with my granddad, he'd buy the latest issue for me. The first thing I'd do is flip to the back and do the fold-in. Even though many of the movie parodies and things were over my head at the time, I absolutely adored that magazine.

I recall that the subscription form had a lot of little jokes embedded in it, and my granddad on occasion would offer to buy me a year's subscription. However, I thought that due to the jokey format of the subscription form that they were just kidding, and that you couldn't actually get it delivered to your house. So I always declined, thinking my granddad would be throwing his money away.

I really really wish I still had some of the big digests that were bought/given to me over the years. On the rare occasions I was able to talk someone into buying me one of those, I'd spend hours straight reading them.

P.S. I used to hate Cracked, which I always felt was the less funny, poor man's version of MAD.

[Kraken]

Cracked.com, OTOH, now steals at least half an hour of every day through Facebook.

[Jeff V]

I remember getting quite good at solving the riddle before folding the page. It was a guilty pleasure of my adolescent self.

[Smoove_B]

Still going strong at 96. Amazing.

The Fold-In has been a staple of Mad for 52 years. And every single one of them has been written and drawn by the same comedic genius: Al Jaffee. He’s now 96 years old, and despite hand tremors that make drawing increasingly difficult, he has no intention of retiring anytime soon. In fact, he holds the Guinness World Record for the “longest-running cartoonist of all time.”

[Daehawk]

Bless him.

[Smoove_B]

Al Jaffee retires at 99:

Al Jaffee, officially the longest-working comic artist ever, has decided to retire at age 99.

So to mark his farewell, Mad’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” will salute Jaffee with a tribute issue next week. It will be the magazine’s final regular issue to offer new material, including Jaffee’s final Fold-In, 65 years after he made his Mad debut.

[Daehawk]

Uh oh. Now he's had it. People retire and the next thing you know they pass on. I think having that schedule keeps a person going. Without it they just sit and fade away. And at 99 theres not a lot to retire for. Maybe he is not well. Sad. been a long ass run. Hope he got more for it than a simple paycheck. Thats amazing.

Heres a good interview when he was 95.

[Smoove_B]

Happy birthday - he's 102 today!

[Jeff V]

Happy birthday - he's 102 today!

That is just awesome. A content provider of my youth still among us.

[Daehawk]

Loved the fold in since I was a kid. Used to go in the grocery store and find the MAD magazine and see what the fold in in the back was showing.

[Smoove_B]

...and not even month later, dead at 102:

Famed Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee has died at the age of 102. The news comes from the Twitter feed of Tom Heintjes, dedicated to Eisner Award winner Hogan's Alley. "I'm very sad to report that the great Al Jaffee has died," the tweet reads. "He had celebrated his 102nd birthday just last month. An incredible legend. RIP to a giant of cartooning." Along with being known for Mad Magazine, Al Jaffee also contributed to Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, which would eventually become the publishing juggernaut Marvel Comics.

[Daehawk]

rip.

[Unagi]

Yeah, RIP.

It strikes me that this is probably the artist that most filled my eyes as a child, in that I just poured over Mad Magazines my entire youth. The first artist that "I owned"... by that, I mean that no one told me about him or what his name was, I saw his work, read his signature, and enjoyed it all by myself.

[dbt1949]

The first copy I read was in 1962 when I read some old copies my aunt had. I think they were from the late 50s. I don't remember any fold ins then.

[Unagi]

The first copy I read was in 1962 when I read some old copies my aunt had. I think they were from the late 50s. I don't remember any fold ins then.

The Mad Fold-In is a feature found on the inside back cover of virtually every Mad magazine since 1964. Written and drawn by Al Jaffee until 2020, the Fold-In is one of the most well-known aspects of the magazine.