Mad magazine C/D

Al Jaffee's on Twitter

Hello, Twitter! It's really me, the one and only Al Jaffee, here to alienate all my friends...

— Al Jaffee (@og_aljaffee) September 25, 2019

i watched some of the chris claremont documentary a few nights back and it turns out that jaffee was family friends with claremont's parents, so they came to him to help him get an internship at Mad... but he wouldn't do it because he said it was no place for a kid! So Jaffee connected Claremont with Stan Lee instead. Quoth Claremont "Once Stan found out I wouldn't have to be paid, I was in."

*folds tweet in from both sides*

yup, that's Al

Didn't know that about Claremont/Jaffee, great story!

Marvel bringing back Crazy magazine this week!

Hold off on the one-shot, though. It's being collected in a couple months alongside a bunch of old-school material.

unless his recent illness has slowed him down, Aragones has only missed one issue of Mad in forty years (...)

― ( ͡° ͜ʖ͡°) (sic), Friday, March 15, 2013 8:22 AM (six years ago)

Sergio's still on an unbroken run after missing that issue in 1967. Dick DeBartolo had been on an unbroken run since Jun 1966, but the new issue of the mostly-reprint version drops next week without him in it.

(Aragones is on 451 issues in a row, DeBartolo's streak ends at 459 issues.)

Cool, Hadn't seen this thread before---here's my trib to the original, Kurtzman-edited Mad, with a link to
early 50s pop culture investigator Robert Warshow's account of visit to Mad offices, with his young son Paul, who'd turned him on to thee rag (another link to email conversation saga w mark s and others, from which this sprang):
https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2019/09/re-landscape-envy-ur-mad.html

feels unbelievable that this was only three years ago

https://www.comixexperience.com/savagecritics/retailing/the-case-against-dan-didio

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Friday, July 5, 2019 5:54 AM (seven months ago)

https://web.archive.org/web/20160729181105/http://www.savagecritic.com/retailing/the-case-against-dan-didio/

Four years.

It sad, he was a publishor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxoEpVDGvPE

RIP Mort Drucker

There is a devastating satirical piece in MAD, it is devastating pic.twitter.com/qpFkicJBxu

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) April 10, 2020

Superb caricaturist! we'll miss him.

https://www.madcoversite.com/ugoi-mort_drucker.html
love that the accompanying drucker pic is a perfect drucker-ish background character

https://www.cbr.com/mad-magazine-al-jaffee-final-fold-in/

https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/final-fold-in-1591812108.jpg

https://static3.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/solved-1591812305.jpg

There is such a thing as a spoiler alert!

According to the link it's a parody of Bounty Law.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 5 October 2021 14:11 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

probably upthread already but https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-tarantino-story-part-3-bounty-law/06/08/2019/

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Tuesday, 5 October 2021 14:21 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Actually Mad is still going, sort of:

After AT&T acquired Time Warner in June 2018, Mad ended newsstand distribution, continuing in comic-book stores and via subscription, and slashed its new content in standard issues (save for end-of-year specials), with the regular magazine almost entirely utilising curated reprints with new covers, although minimal amounts of new content exist in each issue.
I only know this because I saw a newish issue at a local comic book store the other day.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 5 October 2021 14:29 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

The issue after the Bounty Law one was the last issue of new material.

(#10, because in a move typically measured and thoughtful of the Nelson / Didio era, AT&T made the entire staff redundant, abandoned the Manhattan office with iirc years left on their lease, and restarted the numbering from scratch with new Burbank hires a year before being surprised that this had somehow cost money.)

― bobo honkin' slobo babe (sic), Tuesday, 5 October 2021 14:45 (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's crazy to me that they did that ^ .. like, did they think what Mad fans wanted was a BREAK with its glorious past? Insane.

Speaking of the past, I have to say that six issues a year of reprints sounds...... pretty good?

I also have to say that a hardback copy of brand-new spoofs of classic movies like The Thing, done by Tom Richmond and Desmond Devlin sounds..... great??

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/claptrap-movie-spoofs-in-a-classic-humorous-vein/x/27777512#/

Al Jaffee is 101!!!!!

*squints to see what phrase would say if I folded it*

It was on a deep dive into Match Game during the pandemic that I discovered that Dick DeBartolo is gay and married! The news thrilled me more than I thought it would.

s quints to see what phrase would say if I folded it

I can tell you if you pay me

bcz


A FEE IS 11

I'm getting these issues now by the way and they're great. The last one was themed around dogs and pets. I'm pretty sure the fold-ins are new. They're not by Jaffee but they're terrific.

There should be a collected omnibus of fold-ins that miraculously don't cause the page to deteriorate when you fold them. The fold-ins ruined all my old MADs as a kid.

My 7yo daughter has spent the pandemic era getting more and more obsessed with Beano. Kind of wish MAD was still an ongoing thing like it was in the 80s when I read it, as I think it'd be the perfect next step in her comics voyage, and would generally fit her level of cynicism.

It's a shame, because the short-lived 'new' Mad was actually p good.

Still, there's always Viz *s

God, she'd love Viz. Not for a couple more years though!

https://i.imgur.com/CPSBCN9.jpg

Not directly Al's work but

The regular backpage ad from Sundazed for the latest issue of Ugly Things is a proper Al Jaffee fold-in salute. Little surprise as to what it folds into. pic.twitter.com/UB4EmZQN1Y

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) April 28, 2022

To me, hinged feet are the apex of visual comedy.

Who did the Rogan one (and can we see it pre-fold)?

Sorry sic I failed to capture it before my children lost it somewhere.

The latest edition is A MAD LOOK AT GREED and it is excellent. Honestly I have such a blast reading these. No ads. Just like the old days. The pages are slightly slicker. There are no Don Martin comics sadly, I guess he must have retained republishing rights.

I should emphasise there are no original pieces in these editions apart from the fold-in and the cover.

I don't know if his children managed to negotiate rights away from AT&T in the last few years somehow, but as semi-discussed upthread, not having any republishing rights was the reason he quit 35 years ago

I think Martin (and other Mad artists) retained some rights to the original paperback books they produced for Mad (or Warner Bros books), but not on the strips that appeared in the magazine itself.

in that case i don’t get it. I haven’t seen any Martin strips in the three issues I’ve gotten so far. Maybe just coincidence but he’s such a fan favourite.

Did he do strips about greed? Also remember that most of those fans are dead, and the living ones have no way of knowing that 2pp of his work from 50 years ago is in a magazine they don't know where to buy

harsh! I mean you could say that about everything in these current issues. And you’d probably be right. But if they’re making them they might as well get Martin in there imo.

is there anything else in the issues being sold on the fan favourite status of its illustrator, rather than the topic, tho



(I haven't seen them and I don't know if there are Martin strips about greed and I strongly agree in principle that Martin strips would likely be a good thing to have in themed grab-bag Mad compilations if they fit the theme. BUT)

I still recall how epochal a moment it was when Martin jumped ship for Cracked (thankfully at a time when I was regularly buying both, like any proper preadolescent of that era).

sic presumably the only people buying these are the nostalgic superfans like me so your suggestion that “fan favourite” artists would be of no account to the compilers is a strange one by my lights

Newsstand distribution is an insanely inefficient way of reaching superfans in 2022!

(who are not yet dead but tbf old enough to have forgotten that they bought the three-volume HC box set of their favourite artist in 2007)

Almost by definition it is only able to reach casual fans at best — how would a superfan even know what was being released, let alone where to find it? — and theming the collections on subject seems designed specifically to appeal to a general audience on top of nostalgists.

70th anniversary issue is out now, with much more new material than usual, including a COVID-19 gag from Sergio Aragones! Nice letter from Jordan Peele about the fake Mad cover they mocked up for Nope, and a nice letter from Weird Al about his favorite ever Al Jaffee gag. Also: a DOUBLE fold-in!

Yeah, really nice issue with a good balance between old and new stuff, although should've been more Kurtzman Kontent. In a way it would be a good one to go out on (I think this is the last time Kuper is going to be doing new Spy v Spy material?)

i would like to see sergio get a National Arts Medal

Happy 102nd Birthday, Al Jaffee!

Fold-in reveals he's only 12.

loll

vg+

Haha

:(

I'm very sad to report that the great Al Jaffee has died. He had celebrated his 102nd birthday just last month. An incredible legend. RIP to a giant of cartooning. pic.twitter.com/FzZk7wGebd

— Tom Heintjes (@Hoganmag) April 10, 2023