I find it hard to believe I haven’t shared this Al Jaffee drawing before—but perhaps I was saving it for a milestone moment like this, when I could wish the man a happy 95th birthday!

Jaffee sketched out this self-portrait for me at a National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards banquet held at the Waldorf Astoria in 1973, to which I was invited by Bill Kresse, a cartoonist I’d met during a class trip to the Daily News. I was an annoying teen fanboy in those days (now I’m only annoying), yet he was willing to put up with me when I interrupted his chowing down on rubber chicken and presented him with my pad and marker.

Forty-three years later, I am still grateful for his patience. (And for the patience of Curt Swan, Gary Trudeau, Paul Fung, Jr., and others that night as well!)

So thank you for that, Al Jaffee—and for ensuring I own no copies of MAD in mint condition due to my inability to resist folding and creasing those famous inside back cover fold-ins of yours.

Happy birthday!

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! (more…)