Last night, the Comic Art Professional Society had its annual banquet and the honoree was longtime MAD contributor Al Jaffee. Boy, what a popular selection that was. Al and his lovely wife Joyce were flown out on the CAPS dime, put up at a nice (I trust) hotel and are being wined and dined for the weekend. One of the speakers last night was Tom Gammill, who writes for The Simpsons. Tomorrow, Al and Joyce are being chauffeured over to the Simpsons offices because all the writers and producers there are dying to meet the guy.
Al is 90 years old, though he could pass for…oh, maybe 75. He began his career in comics in 1941 and in that first year began writing and drawing for Timely Comics and its editor, Stan Lee. Stan, a past recipient of this award himself, appeared in last night's program via a pre-recorded video. Jaffee hooked up with MAD in 1955, writing his first article for issue #25 and then writing and drawing one for #26. Amazingly, there was someone else in the room last night who was in MAD even before Al. Russ Heath, last year's CAPS honoree, was present.
Jaffee left MAD almost immediately after those first sales because Harvey Kurtzman left. Al followed Harvey to other ventures but when those failed to ignite, Jaffee returned to MAD as a writer (only) in 1958 and then began drawing also for them in 1963. Last night's speakers discussed his career and when I got to the podium, I discussed why Al wrote for MAD but didn't draw for them for five years.
MAD publisher William M. Gaines liked working with a little "family" of freelancers. He liked having the same guys in every issue. It didn't matter as much with writers — some of them came and went, some stayed forever — but most of the guys who drew for MAD stayed a long, long time. They did not have any formal contracts but there was an understanding that if they remained exclusive to MAD (i.e., didn't work for direct competitors), they would routinely receive a certain amount of work.
After editor Al Feldstein had finished assigning X number of pages to Mort Drucker and Y number to Bob Clarke and Z to Wallace Wood (etc.), there were no openings for anyone else, no room for Jaffee art. So Al wrote…and he wrote very well. Al also didn't have that much time to draw anyway since he was doing his newspaper strip, Tall Tales, from 1957 to 1963.
About the time that strip ended, there was a rare exodus among the MAD artists. Several different stories have been told about why Wally Wood stopped drawing for the publication but they all involve alcohol and we needn't go into them here. The point is that Wood ceased to be a regular contributor about the time Jaffee had more time on his drawing board. His first "new" art for MAD appeared in issue #76, cover-dated January of 1963.
And another new artist popped up in MAD in the same issue. That was the first issue to feature the cartoon stylings of Señor Sergio Aragonés.
The circumstantial evidence led me to a conclusion that I announced in my speech last night: If Wally Wood had gone to A.A., we would not have been honoring Al Jaffee last evening. And Sergio wouldn't have a career at all.
Which is, of course, a joke — at least in Jaffee's case. His drawing skills could not have been denied a place in MAD for much longer. Soon after in issue #86, he inaugurated the MAD Fold-In — that thing you saw in the inside back cover and you didn't really want to fold your issue and ruin it a little but you couldn't resist seeing the way the picture and the text under it changed when you did. I have friends who began buying two copies of every issue — one to fold, one to keep — and I can't believe it didn't boost the magazine's circulation a bit.
In 1968, there was a brief worry that the feature would have to end. In 1965, the rising cost of printing forced MAD to go from 25 cents, as it had been since 1955, to 30 cents. Just three years later, costs went up again and it had to go to 35 cents. Gaines fretted that readers would think they were being gouged by a new price hike so soon after the last one. Feldstein, who had long felt that MAD needed to upgrade its "package" a bit, suggested they print the inside covers in color instead of black-and-white so the buyers would feel they were getting a little something more for their money.
Gaines agreed but there was a concern: Jaffee had been working his magic — crafting drawings which turned from one image to another when folded — in black-and-white. How could he do that with the added complication of color? Well, they asked Al and he said "I'll try" and he had no problem making the next one work in color. Or the next one. Or the one after that…and so on. My God, he's still doing them. Almost every issue. At age 90. In color and just as good as they ever were.
As stunning as the Fold-Ins have been, my favorite Jaffee contribution to MAD was his invention of a feature called "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," which commenced in #98. On several occasions, David Letterman has been quoted as saying his entire career is nothing more than that — snappy answers to stupid questions. The photo above is me right after I got Al to sign a piece of original art from my collection. Yes, I own the originals to the first installment of "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions." It's not only a prize I treasure, it's the guiding philosophy of so much of my life.
The banquet hall last night was full of other folks to admire. Along with Sergio and Russ Heath, there was Mell Lazarus and June Foray and Cathy Guisewite and Jerry Eisenberg and Floyd Norman and Scott Shaw! and Stan Sakai and Tom Luth and Max Pross and Bill Morrison and I don't know why I started listing attendees because now someone will be miffed that I didn't include them. So I'll just say that I intentionally left out the name of the most important, talented attendee and everyone can assume I mean them.
The main thing though of course was that Al Jaffee was there. He seemed to be having a very good time and not just because he was missing all the snow back in New York. Before the ceremony, his wife Joyce was amazed at the crowd and at the lush setup for the event and she asked me, "Do you think he really deserves this?" I couldn't think of a snappy answer at that moment but after all the speeches and all the love that was demonstrated for Al, I think she realized it was kind of a stupid question.