The focus of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is its annual “The Lives They Lived” feature, which memorializes many of those we’ve lost this year, including George Carlin, Will Elder, Joan Winston, and others.

My favorite component of the issue turned out not to be the words, but rather a single photograph, taken in 1939 of pals Al Jaffee and Will Elder as they yukked it up in their high school cafeteria:

It’s easy to see why they were destined to become part of the “usual gang of idiots” behind Mad magazine. I’d have killed to have lunch with those two guys. They’d have had me snorting milk out my nose in seconds!

And here’s Al Jaffee 69 years later, when he and I spoke at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, immediately after the Golden and Silver Age Comics panel:

His hairline may have changed, but at 87, the zaniness within that cranium still remains.