Al Jaffee’s MAD Life

“Is this a follow-up post about Al Jaffee?”
“No, it’s my grocery list. The internet will publish anything.”

In an earlier post about MAD Magazine‘s Al Jaffee, I reprinted a biographical piece he’d written in the early 1960s.

Jaffee wrote that he spent 6 years in Lithuania as a child with his Mom. His Dad stayed in the US but dutifully mailed Al’s beloved comic strips to him overseas. The story sounded like a fascinating morsel and I wanted to know more. And there is more. A lot more and it reads like a page-turning thriller.

Danny Fingeroth, the Senior VP of Education at MoCCA, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York, sent me a note about the post and told me about Al’s upcoming biography, Al Jaffee’s MAD Life. The book, written by Mary Lou Weisman, “covers the story of his chilling six years in Lithuania with his mother (as well as the rest of his life and career, of course),” says Fingeroth. And what a life that was (and still is, fortunately).

Click to continue reading Al Jaffee’s MAD Life