Al Jaffe's Mad Life

Al Jaffee's Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman

There was about a three year period for me growing up in the 1970s when MAD Magazine was the bomb.  From about 3rd grade until about 6th grade, nothing brought me more pleasure than a trip to the grocery store, heading towards the periodicals, and seeing that the new, bi-monthly issue of MAD was out.  Not to mention all of the books, “super specials” (you’ll know what that is if you’re a fan), calendars, games and other memorabilia that celebrated irreverence so well, without ever really crossing the line.

I still remember the names of many of the contributors.  Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Frank Jacobs, Dick DeBartello, and who could forget Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side Of...”?  My favorite, though was Al Jaffee.  Nobody could make me break down into hysterics better then Jaffee.  If you were a casual reader, Jaffee was the one the contribute the back cover “fold-ins” as well as the immortal “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”.   Never knowing that much about the comings and goings of the magazine, I was eager to read this biography that came out only a couple of years ago.

Although this was a very well written, and interesting look at the man’s life, it sadly fell short of my expectations.  What I was really wanting, was the majority of this book to be about the goings on at MAD Magazine.  This book actually covers very little of that frame of Jaffee’s life.  It’s about 90% “pre-MAD” and 10% MAD.  Of the “Pre-MAD” portion, most of that deals with Jaffee’s childhood.  It’s a very interesting (and a bit sad) childhood.  Growing up in a Jewish family in rural Georgia in a fairly well-to-to home, Jaffee’s eccentric mother, for whatever reason, takes Al and his little brothers away from their father rather abruptly to move to the “old country” of Lithuania.  Lithuania, according to Jaffee, was about a “century behind”.  The situation was rather tough, yet Al and his clan managed the best they could.  Still, there were a lot of trials and tribulations in a very strict Orthodox Jewish family, and you can easily see where Jaffee gets his warped sense of humor.

So without going into too much detail, only the last chapter or so deals with his tenure at MAD, and to be blunt, it isn’t very interesting.  You learn a few snippets, but not really that much.  To be fair, though, there probably isn’t that many interesting things that happened behind the production of the magazine, so the author can’t really write about things that never happened.  An example of the eventlessness: Supposedly most of the writers and artists didn’t even work at the MAD office.  They simply did their work from home, and got paid on a “per page” basis when they submitted their work.  It seems as though it was a grim existence, and the humor at MAD probably surfaced much more on the pages in the magazine than it did behind the scenes.

So it was a nice, well-done story about a man that many probably aren’t that familiar with.  if you’re a fan, it’s worth the purchase.  It’s not too long either, and Jaffee even illustrates much of the book giving the reader a nice, visual description of the escapades.

Several years ago, there was a CD-ROM collection of every MAD magazine made up until the late 1990s.  I’ll still have it and view/read it from time to time.  It would be great if such a retrospective could be released in a similar fashion of all of Jaffee’s “solo” material.  There was a lot, and it was all great!