Longtime Mad magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee dead at 102

Al Jaffee, Mad magazine’s award-winning cartoonist and ageless wise guy who delighted millions of children with the sneaky fun of the Fold-In and the snark of “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” has died. He was 102.

Jaffee died on Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99.

Mad magazine, with its wry, sometimes pointed send-ups of politics and culture, was essential reading for teens and preteens during the baby-boom era and inspiration for countless future comedians. Few of the magazine’s self-billed “Usual Gang of Idiots” contributed as much – and as dependably – as the impish, bearded cartoonist.

For decades, virtually every issue featured new material by Jaffee. His collected “Fold-Ins,” taking on everyone in his unmistakably broad visual style from the Beatles to TMZ, was enough for a four-volume box set published in 2011.

Jaffee was also known for “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” which delivered exactly what the title promised. A comic from 1980 showed a man on a fishing boat with a noticeably bent reel. “Are you going to reel in the fish?” his wife asks. “No,” he says, “I’m going to jump into the water and marry the gorgeous thing.”

Jaffee didn’t just satirise the culture; he helped change it. His parodies of advertisements included such future real-life products as automatic redialing for a telephone, a computer spell checker and graffiti-proof surfaces. He also anticipated peelable stamps, multiblade razors and self-extinguishing cigarettes.

Art was the saving presence of his childhood, which left him with permanent distrust of adults and authority. He was born in Savannah, Georgia, but for years was torn between the US, where his father (a department store manager) preferred to live, and Lithuania, where his mother (a religious Jew) longed to return. In Lithuania, Jaffee endured poverty and bullying, but also developed his craft. With paper scarce and no school to attend, he learned to read and write through the comic strips mailed by his father.

By his teens, he was settled in New York City and so obviously gifted that he was accepted into the High School of Music & Art. His mother, meanwhile, remained in Lithuania and was apparently killed during the war.

He had a long career before Mad. He drew for Timely Comics, which became Marvel Comics, and for several years sketched the “Tall Tales” panel for the New York Herald Tribune. Jaffee first contributed to Mad in the mid-1950s.

Mad lost much of its readership and edge after the 1970s, and Jaffee outlived virtually all of the magazine’s stars. But he rarely lacked for ideas even as his method, drawing by hand, remained mostly unchanged in the digital era.

“I’m so used to being involved in drawing and knowing so many people that do it, that I don’t see the magic of it,” Jaffee told the publication Graphic NYC in 2009.

“If you reflect and think about it, I’m sitting down and suddenly there’s a whole big illustration of people that appears. I’m astounded when I see magicians work, even though I know they’re all tricks. You can imagine what someone thinks when they see someone drawing freehand and it’s not a trick. It’s very impressive.”