Friday, March 30, 2012 Ticket 33THE STAR-LEDGER

Likewise, a block of type transformed into different

words when folded prop-erly. But Jaffee didn’t have high hopes that

the idea would sell.Recalls the artist: “I did the

first one — just a very rough mock-up — and brought it in to the editor, Al Feldstein. I said, ‘Al, you’re not going to publish this, I know. But it’s a funny idea. I just wanted you to see it. You’re not going to publish it because it mutilates the magazine.’

“He was intrigued. He ran into the publisher’s office, came back and said Bill — Bill Gaines, the publisher — said, ‘Let’s do it. It looks like fun. And if the kid mutilates one magazine, he’ll buy another one to save for his collection.’ So we did that one.”

(As Jaffee recalls, it was a gag about Elizabeth Taylor’s love life.)

Jaffee never expected to do a sec-ond fold-in, let alone 48 years’ worth.

“Very often,” the artist says, “you come up with an idea for a magazine like Mad, and then you go on to other things. But

when the editor came to me a month or two later and said, ‘How

about another fold-in?’ I said, ‘Al, that was it. I mean, it was a one-shot.

I didn’t intend to go on doing these.’ But he says, ‘Do it.’ I wrestled with it and came up with a second one.

“And, as they say in show-biz, the rest is history.”

It took a while before Jaffee

mastered the fold-in format.“The early ones were the most

challenging,” the artist says, “because it hadn’t yet imprinted itself on me. It was still a gimmick. I just didn’t think in terms of locking in a way of operating this thing. But as time went by, of course, you do it over and over and over again, and you find what Step 1 is, and you have to go to Step 2. These steps sort of imprint them-selves on your subconscious, and it becomes easier.”

In some ways, crafting the type at the bottom of the fold-in was as demanding as the artwork for Jaffee.

“It became not only a challenge but a source of great enjoyment,” he says.

“The way I did it when I first started — I didn’t even own a type-writer. I would have graph paper, which had these little boxes you could write in. Because you have to count the characters. So I’d write the sentence, and then I’d have to rewrite it and rewrite it until it fit the space. And I’d wind up with two or three pages of handwrit-ten stuff on graph paper.

“It’s like people who enjoy doing crossword puzzles. You have to use the little gray cells in your head.”

“The Mad Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010” is available in stores and online. Cool Stuff appears the final Friday of the month in Ticket. Mark Voger: mvoger@starledger.com

A B

A B

The humorous American institu-tion known as Mad began as a comic book in 1952. Jaffee’s first work in Mad appeared in 1955, the same year publisher William M. Gaines converted the publication into a magazine. Jaffee recalls that as a freelancer in 1964, he was fishing for an idea that he could sell to Mad.

“I was kind of looking around,” the artist, 91, says in a call from his home in Manhattan.

“I was in my studio. I’d just spread a whole bunch of magazines out. I noticed that a number of them had fold-outs — fancy, full-color fold-outs — particularly Playboy and Life magazine and some others. I thought, ‘Gee, Mad should have some kind of a folding thing. But what could I do for Mad? They’re not going to do a straight fold-out, the way Playboy does.’ For one thing, they didn’t have color in those days.

“So I experimented and I decided I’m going in the opposite direction. All these fancy magazines have these huge, impressive color fold-outs? Well, Mad was going to have a cheap, black-and-white fold-in.”

Jaffee hit on a unique idea: a drawing that, when the reader folded it as instructed, morphed

into something else.

DRAWFOL

PA

ING ONDEDPER!

AND DRAW — JAFFEE WAS PLANNLOWING HIS ART DREAMS. HE HEAST OBSTACLES TO A CAREER TOP

WHAT HAS AL JAFFEE SPENT HIS ENTIRE

CAREER DOING?

WRITER & ARTIST:

MARk VoGER/ STAR-LEDGER

STAFF

HoMAGE oR RIP-oFF? TRY oUT oUR

COOL STUFF FOLD-INFOLD PAGE OVER LIKE THIS!

FOLD THIS SECTION OVER LEFT FOLD BACK SO “A” MEETS “B”

A one-shot idea turned into the longest-running feature in the history of Mad magazine when, in 1964, artist Al Jaffee created the “Mad Fold-in.” Jaffee’s fold-ins have been compiled in a deluxe four-book set from Chronicle Books.

AND DRAW — JAFFEE WAS

COOL STUFF COOL STUFF STUFF COOL STUFF COOLCOOL STUFF COOL STUFF COOL