Do you remember the last time you flipped through a Mad magazine?
Maybe it was when you were a kid, back when Mad’s inimitable satire felt a little dangerous, like something that should be kept a secret from disapproving grown-ups. Maybe you’ve looked at a Mad again recently, and laughed yourself stupid like you haven’t since you used to read the magazine under your bedroom covers with a flashlight.
Whatever your last experience with Mad, you probably did the Fold-In on the back cover. Nobody reads a Mad without starting with the Fold-In. For the uninitiated—and if you’ve never heard of the Fold-In, your childhood must have been very bleak—it’s essentially a sight gag. It starts with a drawing and a question; something like, “Who conducted the most exhaustive Washington probe recently?” But then you fold the page together and a different image appears, along with a punch line that defies your expectations, something like “the president’s doctors.”
The Fold-In has been a staple of Mad for 52 years. And every single one of them has been written and drawn by the same comedic genius: Al Jaffee. He’s now 96 years old, and despite hand tremors that make drawing increasingly difficult, he has no intention of retiring anytime soon. In fact, he holds the Guinness World Record for the “longest-running cartoonist of all time.”
More:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2017/03/al-jaffee-the-genius-behind-mad-magazine-fold-insStill prefer Dave Berg's gently affectionate cynicism.
