Famed Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee died earlier this week at the age of 102 and now, Stephen Colbert is paying tribute to Jaffee in a touching — and hilarious — moment during The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. In the tribute, which you can watch for yourself in the video below, Colbert calls Jaffee “one of the true giants of my childhood” and spoke about how he learned a lot from Jaffee as well as referenced some of Jaffee’s better known contributions, including his long-running Mad Magazine Fold-In feature, a piece of artwork that had to be folded vertically and inward to reveal a new image.
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“Before we go, I just wanted to mark the passing of one of the true giants of my childhood and I’m guessing probably yours, Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, who died yesterday at the age of 1012,” Colbert said. “A lot of us in comedy grew up reading Mad and Al’s work was one of the big reasons why we did. He created some of Mad’s best-loved bits like ‘Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions’ and the Mad Fold-In and I was lucky enough to meet Al and even wrote the intro to one of his books and some of the things I’m saying right now are from that intro that I wrote already because I’m a lazy person and I think Al would appreciate that. I learned a lot from those drawings, a lot of dumb, dumb things. These days I make a living being professionally ridiculous and I pride myself on the ability to be an idiot on a moment’s notice. I’m sure I owe some of that to Al. I certainly have to credit him for whatever ability I have to give snappy answers and ask stupid questions. Al sent me a lovely note after I wrote the intro to his book and said, ‘Thank you, Stephen, for being so nice to someone who did everything he could to corrupt your childhood.’ You succeeded, Al, and I am eternally grateful.”
Over the course of his extensive career, Jaffee worked not only for Mad Magazine, but he also contributed to Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, which would eventually become the publishing juggernaut Marvel Comics.
Al Jaffee discussed his popular Fold-Ins during an interview with Vulture in March, which was originally conducted in 2008. The Fold-In ran from 1964 until 2019 and became a popular feature in Mad. Jaffee also talked about joining Mad for the first time.
“In 1955, three years after the magazine began. Harvey Kurtzman came to me and asked if I’d like to come and work for him. I had freelanced for MAD with a couple of pieces, and he liked my work,” he said about his early days at Mad.
“It was. I was making a very nice living at Timely, but it just seemed like the right time,” Jaffee added about switching from Timely to Mad. “I told Stan Lee I was leaving, and then I called Harvey and said, “I’m coming with you.” And he said, “Well, actually, I’m not with MAD anymore. But don’t worry. I’ve got something in the works.” He had just left MAD for a new humor magazine published by Hugh Hefner, called Trump. This was in the mid- to late 1950s.”
He then went into the history behind the fabled Fold-In. “At this time — this would have been in April of 1964 — every major magazine was publishing some sort of foldout feature. Playboy, of course, had made it big by having a centerfold. So did Life magazine,” he said. “They would have one showing, say, the geography of the moon, or something like that. Even Sports Illustrated had one at one point. So, naturally, how do you go the other way? You have a fold-in, rather than a fold-out. I created a mock-up, and wrote on it something like: “All good magazines are doing a foldout, but this lousy magazine is going to do a ‘Fold-in.’ I went to Al Feldstein and showed it to him, but I didn’t think the idea had a chance in hell of being used.”
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