Al Jaffee (1921–2023)

Oh my god, I had completely forgotten about these Al Jaffe books. When I was a kid (we're talking around seven or eight years old), I thought they were the funniest thing ever and I used to pray for people to ask me the questions so I could come back with the snappy answers. (Yep, I was a brat as a kid, too -- shocking, I know.) No one ever did, at least not until I was an adult, at which time I came in from a sub-zero day looking like an ice monster and my then-husband said, "Is it cold show more out?" and I responded witheringly, "Is what cold out?" I think that was one of the reasons we got divorced, probably. Oh well! Love the books anyway! show less

One of the more memorable Mad Magazine books. There are some classics here, and Jaffee's illustrations are always hiding a thing or two that perhaps you didn't notice when you read this when you were 12 years old. I love the 36 ice cream flavors, for instance.

A short but very entertaining biography of Al Jaffee, writer and cartoonist best known for his work on MAD magazine.

He was born in New York to immigrant parents. His father managed a department store in Savannah. In 1927 his mother got the crazy idea to take her four young sons back to Lithuania, to the shtel where she grew up, because she was homesick. Al, the eldest, was six years old. His father refused to accompany them and somewhere along the long journey Al realized that he could not show more depend on his mother for protection or survival. They found lodging with his mother's father and other relatives, in the vanished world of pre WWII Europe complete with outhouses and kerosene lamps.

His mother reassured the boys that their father would come "soon" to take them home, but weeks turned into months with no father, though he sent them packages of Sunday comics every few weeks. Al realized his father was similarly untrustworthy for having let their mother take them away, and for not coming to their aid. Things were chaotic: their mother was obsessed with doing charitable works and spent their money on others, while her boys didn't have enough to eat. Al remembers always being hungry. She'd lock them in the house while she went out to help the poor.

The boys adapted; they were on their own most of the time and made their own fun with home made toys and games with the local kids. On the eve of WWII their father finally showed up and took them back to America. Their mother was eventually killed by the Nazis. Back in the USA Al was a greenhorn with his hobnailed shoes and accented English, again the odd kid out.

He'd always been good at drawing, impressing other kids with his copies of comic characters. In Lithuania he drew in the dirt; in America he kept drawing on paper. His teachers recognized his talent and he was chosen to go to the new High School of Music and Art, along with his friend Wolf Eisenberg. Wolf later changed his name to Will Elder. After high school he freelanced for MAD and worked on various comics till he joined Trump and Humbug (both failed) and eventually MAD.

I know him only from MAD and hadn't realized he did other comics. He created a syndicated strip called "Tall Tales" with vertical strips and jokes that worked with that format - he figured it was a good way to get onto the comic page. Somebody should put together a book of these. At MAD he both wrote and drew all kinds of stuff. I have one of his "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" books around here somewhere, and his most famous contribution is probably the fold-in that appeared on the last page.

It's an entertaining and poignant book. He's frank about his family problems and the legacy of distrust his chaotic childhood left him. His next youngest brother Harry was his playmate and drawing partner growing up, but as an adult he became more and more paranoid and disoriented and died alienated from family. A third brother had become deaf from meningitis in Lithuania; he went to a school for the Deaf but his disability limited their communication. Al's first marriage ended unhappily but as he says, his MAD family came through for him. Eventually he married a second time, more happily, but at the end of the book he's joking about how hard it is for him to enjoy himself. show less

You don't really need to know anything about Mad Magazine to appreciate this biography of it's esteemed contributor Al Jaffee, although that helps.

An enthralling look at life in early 20th-century America, but the story begins when he is taken "home" to Lithuania by his mother at a young age, and repatriated sometime later as a functionally "new immigrant."