The Complete Al Jaffee

©2010 MAD Magazine and E.C. Publications, used with permission

… no, sadly this is not the title of a new book from MAD. That would be one beat-up book by the time readers got done doing the fold-ins… all 426 of them.

How do I know Al has done 426 fold-ins for MAD? Thanks to Doug Gilford, the author of The MAD Cover Site, that’s how.

Some weeks ago I posted an announcement from MAD calling for birthday wishes to be sent in for Al, who turns 90 on March 13th. The well wishes had to be actual cards, letter, etc. and not your garden-variety easy e-mail. Doug decided to give Al something practical and, apparently either having an enormous amount of free time or no desire to sleep or spend time with his family, he cataloged every appearance of Al’s work in the pages of MAD including issue number, the title of the piece, Al’s credit on it (writer,artist or both) and any collaborators on each… all 788 of them. That count might not be accurate as I sort of zoned out in the 600’s counting them all, but it’s a lot. It also includes a small number of reprints of some of Al’s work from previous issues, but they are only a small fraction of that total. Some issues Al has had as many as 6 different credits of original stuff. That’s what I call a body of work.

Check out Doug’s exhaustive list for yourself! Al will probably need to take a nap after reading it. Actually he’ll probably drop and do 50 push-ups, draw three MAD features and then take a nap.