Al Jaffee's Mad Life

by Mary-Lou Weisman

  Al was in a no-kidding mood. “Stan, I haven’t had any sleep in three days. I don’t want to look to my laurels. I’m too tired. And maybe I’m tired of Patsy Walker. I think you should give the job to this guy.” And he walked out. “This was totally abnormal behavior for me, especially toward Stan, who had been my friend and mentor for years.”

  By the time Al got home, Ruth was waiting on the front lawn. Stan had been phoning nonstop. “Stan said he was only kidding. He said you can keep on doing Patsy Walker.”

  But Al had made up his mind during the hour-and-a-half trip home from the city. He called Stan back. “I just can’t do it anymore.”

  Al might never have found the courage to leave Patsy Walker—given his fear of change and separation—but he had an ace up his sleeve. “I couldn’t wait to get to the phone to call Harvey. ‘Okay, Harvey. I’m burning my bridges. I quit Patsy Walker. I’m coming to MAD to work with you.’ ”

  “Oh, Al, I forgot to tell you,” Harvey responded in the slow, measured way he had of speaking, “I quit MAD. But don’t despair, Al. I think I have something in the works. Everything is going to be all right.” Once again, Al hung suspended.

  In spite of the fact that almost everything in his life thus far seemed calculated to demonstrate that everything would not be all right, he believed Harvey. Al, who even now torments himself nonstop with scenarios of unpaid mortgages, life insurance policies, and credit card bills, never looked down. “I’m out of work. I’ve got a couple of thousand dollars in the bank. My faith in Harvey was like the faith I might have felt for a parent, the kind of parent I never had. When I would express doubt about my ability to do something, for instance, a superhero parody, I would say, ‘I don’t know if I can do that, Harvey. I don’t know anatomy,’ and Harvey would answer, ‘I don’t want somebody who knows anatomy, I want Jaffee. I know what you can do.’ He always reassured me that he had made the right choice when he chose me. He was ‘Father Knows Best.’ My teacher at Music and Art, Miss Riley, had been like that, too. If I ever said I didn’t know how to do something, she would wink at me and say, ‘Oh, yes you do.’” In a lifetime of surrogate parents, Miss Riley and Harvey Kurtzman stood out. So Al waited and did not despair.

  Sure enough, about a week later Harvey called to offer Al a guaranteed ten-thousand-dollar salary and a position as associate editor of Trump, a start-up satirical magazine intended to compete with MAD and bankrolled by the hottest entrepreneur in the magazine business, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner. Al was so relieved that he forgot about the ten-thousand-dollar salary cut that had kept him from accepting Harvey’s original offer. “How could I argue with this guy Hefner, this genius entrepreneur with the golden touch? I was putting my future in Harvey’s hands, and Harvey was putting his in Hefner’s hands.”

  The Bill Gaines–Harvey Kurtzman split is legendary in the annals of cartoon history and reaches back to 1949, when Al Feldstein and Kurtzman were both working for Bill Gaines at EC Comics, which Gaines had renamed Entertaining Comics and which published horror, crime, science-fiction, and war comic books. In 1956, when Kurtzman quit MAD to edit Trump, Gaines would choose Al Feldstein to replace Kurtzman. The two men had been rivals ever since Kurtzman came to EC Comics in 1949. Kurtzman was annoyed that Feldstein was making more money than he was, even though he worked as hard as Feldstein. Nevertheless, as Gaines pointed out to Kurtzman, Feldstein was outproducing the slower, more meticulous Kurtzman and making more money for the company. Gaines suggested that Kurtzman make up the difference by starting a humorous comic book, which would use his talents well and release him from the time-consuming research that, as a perfectionist, he had been lavishing on EC’s war comics, thereby allowing him to make more money. In 1952, Kurtzman responded with MAD, a comic book that would lampoon the comics themselves. It got off to a slow start, but the fourth issue, which contained a wickedly dark parody of Superman, entitled Superduperman, flew off the stands.

  In 1954, at the height of the anti-Soviet madness, Fredric Wertham, a distinguished psychoanalyst, published Seduction of the Innocent, in which he argued that crime and horror comics were contributing to juvenile delinquency, that popular culture, including the movies, was part of a capitalist dumbing down of the culture, and implied that Wonder Woman was a lesbian role model and that Batman and Robin were homosexuals. (Wertham was a political liberal and civil libertarian. He ran free, low-cost psychiatric clinics in Harlem and testified for the integrationists in Brown v. Board of Education, but he made a prudish exception to the First Amendment when it came to severed heads, melting flesh, and sex.) The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, led by Estes Kefauver, conducted what, in retrospect, was as much an inquisition as the McCarthy witch hunt. By 1954, the Comics Code, the spawn of that commission, had, in addition to demanding that teenage heroines like Patsy and Hedy wear looser blouses, banned torture, the walking dead, and all depictions “lurid, unsavory, and gruesome.” J. Edgar Hoover, often the butt of MAD satires, kept a file on MAD.

  The code effectively put the EC horror empire out of business, leaving Gaines with the MAD comic book and a pile of debt. Gaines was on the brink of closing down EC, at least temporarily. Reluctantly, he laid off Feldstein and was about to stop publication of MAD as well, when Kurtzman, taking advantage of Gaines’s weakened condition and emboldened by a job offer from Pageant magazine, encouraged Gaines to borrow money to keep MAD afloat—not as a ten-cent comic book but as a publication more in keeping with the fulfillment of Kurtzman’s high school dream—a classier, more expensive, and more successful twenty-five-cent bimonthy, satiric magazine. Gaines acceded.

  First Harvey turned his satiric lance on EC’s own defunct horror comics and made mincemeat out of such sophisticated publications as Life and National Geographic. Ironically, by slamming the door shut on horror, crime, and sex, Wertham and the Kefauver investigation had inadvertently opened the door to the magazine most responsible for putting an end to American childhood innocence. Hypocrisy, revealed and soured by satire, was mother’s milk to MAD.

  Even so, Al believes that Gaines’s experience with the Kefauver committee forever had a chilling effect on MAD magazine’s content. “After that,” says Al, “MAD never went to the printer without Gaines poring over it with great care. He read every single word. He didn’t fact-check or critique the humor. He was looking to make sure it was safe—safe from copyright infringements and safe from vulgarity. He’d been burned. Gaines wanted good, clean fun.” Superduperman had incurred the wrath of the owners of Superman, National Periodicals, who threatened to sue for infringement but ultimately did not. MAD wasn’t as lucky with Sing Along with MAD, a collection of parody lyrics that provoked the lawsuit Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications. Ultimately, after an appeal that went to the Supreme Court, MAD’s rights to parody and satire prevailed. In 1966, the ownership of MAD’s mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, was contested and affirmed in MAD’s favor. In spite of Gaines’s best efforts to avoid vulgarity, MAD managed to provoke angry letters from readers—most likely the parents of readers. A deer dressed as a hunter and carrying a gun brought down the wrath of the National Rifle Association. One of Al’s fold-ins—the theme of which was immorality—depicted a sex shop that included an inflatable nude. When folded in, the picture morphed into the likenesses of notorious evangelicals who had recently been in the news for their sexual improprieties. Gaines got hit with angry mail from both sides—the fervent evangelicals and those who were offended by the naked dolls. The protests were so significant that MAD lost a chunk of sales from some supermarkets who banished that issue from their racks.

  Feeling proud and vindicated about MAD magazine’s phenomenally successful launch—the first issue sold out and had to go back to press—Kurtzman asked for a personal stake in his baby. The accepted version of the percentage story is that Gaines offered Kurtzman 10 percent. Kurtzman, who was more interested in control than money, countered with a demand for 51 percent. Gaines refused and Kurtzman left MAD, taking mo
st of the staff with him. Gaines immediately rehired Al Feldstein to replace Kurtzman as editor.

  “Harvey was naïve,” says Denis Kitchen, coauthor, along with Paul Buhle, of The Art of Harvey Kurtzman. “Harvey didn’t understand how offensive his fifty-one percent demand was to the patriarchal Gaines.” Kitchen believes that if Kurtzman had had any business sense, or if he’d had better advice, he would have dropped his demand for 51 percent and negotiated for and gotten editorial control.

  “Three years later,” Al recalls, “when I started freelancing officially for MAD, Bill Gaines asked me, ‘What is it about Harvey that people will follow him to the ends of the earth?’ I didn’t know how to answer him. Harvey said to the people at MAD, ‘I’m leaving MAD. Who wants to come with me?’ and nearly everybody went with him. He was like the Pied Piper.”

  Al believes that Kurtzman found the courage to leave MAD because of Hefner’s offer. He further believes that Kurtzman didn’t want Bill Gaines supervising his satirical work. “While he felt that Bill Gaines was very capable and successful with his horror magazines, Harvey didn’t think Bill had much of a feel for satire. Harvey had used up the comic format. He wanted more text, more illustrations, and more non-cartoon stuff. Bill Gaines, who had more of a comic-book mentality, had given in to Harvey’s demands, but Harvey still wasn’t satisfied.”

  Denis Kitchen thinks that Hefner seduced Kurtzman. Kurtzman couldn’t resist the fact that the charismatic Hefner, who represented “class” to Kurtzman, had come to him, flattered him, called him a “genius.” Moreover, Hefner promised him slick paper rather than newsprint, placement on newsstands with “smart” magazines such as Look, and, more important, total editorial control and unlimited funds.

  Al has his own version about the percentage face-off between Kurtzman and Gaines. “Harvey might have made millions if he had been willing to cede control and accept forty-nine percent, but that’s assuming Harvey could have done with MAD what Al Feldstein, who inherited the editorship, was able to do—make money. I think Gaines was willing to give Harvey forty-nine percent of MAD. He may not have been able to give Harvey the fifty-one percent he wanted because Gaines’s mother, Jessie, a hard-nosed businesswoman, held a controlling interest in MAD and refused to yield control to Harvey. If Harvey had taken the forty-nine percent, he would have been two percentage points less rich than Bill Gaines—that’s many, many millions of dollars. Harvey missed the boat on that. The thing that killed it for Harvey was that his eye was on the art, not the bank account. I respect him for that.”

  Denis Kitchen agrees that Kurtzman blew a golden opportunity when he turned down 49 percent but thinks he could have had his 49 percent and editorial control.

  Feldstein, who was the editor at MAD for nearly thirty years, is miffed that Kurtzman, who died in 1993 and edited the magazine for a mere two years, continues to get more credit for its success than he does. “Harvey didn’t have the guts to announce that he was leaving MAD. Instead he manufactured a reason for Bill to fire him. I took over MAD in 1956 when it was selling about 350,000 issues as a ‘quarterly’—if Harvey could make the deadlines. I assembled an entirely new and talented staff of writers and artists and increased its sales to almost three million, eight times a year, with two hundred fifty original and reprint paperback titles, eleven foreign editions, and four special annual editions. And yet almost all of the articles written about MAD attribute its creation to Harvey (and deservedly so) but then to go on to describe the magazine’s popularity, its influence, and its originality through the late fifties, sixties, seventies, and early eighties when I was MAD’s editor and never even mention me! You bet it’s annoying.”

  Al was happy to follow Harvey Kurtzman to Trump. “I had a tiger by the tail. I was working for Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame, the biggest magazine around. I was going to the Playboy Club and being invited to Hefner’s Christmas party. It was celebrity time.” Trump was going to compete and overwhelm MAD with superior production. MAD was all black and white, except for the front and back covers. Trump was going to have color throughout. Backed by Hefner’s money, driven by Kurtzman’s boundless creativity, staffed by the most talented satirists in the industry—Arnold Roth, Jack Davis, Will Elder, and Al Jaffee—how could Trump fail?

  Easily, as it turned out. After two issues Trump crashed and burned like a third world missile launch. “The story that Hefner gave us was that his bank said that unless he cut his expenses, they wouldn’t continue to finance Playboy. Since Playboy was the flagship, his explanation was plausible and we all accepted it. Collier’s and Liberty magazines had folded because they, too, couldn’t get bank loans.” In retrospect, Al wonders if maybe Trump’s price—fifty cents—and elegant look turned off the rebellious kids who were well content with the scruffier, cheaper twenty-five-cent MAD.

  Years after Trump failed, Al ran into Hefner’s financial CFO, Bob Preuss, who told him that Trump, supposedly a monthly, had been folded because Harvey Kurtzman, a perfectionist, and Willie Elder, a slow, methodical artist, could not be relied upon to put the monthly magazine out on time, as evidenced by the fact that the first issue came out in January of 1957 and the second in March. Advertisers tore their hair, and Hefner got stuck paying for days of reserved but unused press time. “I gave Harvey Kurtzman an unlimited budget,” Hefner is reported to have said, “and he exceeded it.”

  Al was now completely unemployed and without income. He was thinking about what to do next when, within two weeks of Trump’s demise, Kurtzman called Al with another “do not despair” message. He had a plan to start another monthly satirical magazine, Humbug. Humbug’s targets would be more topical, more sophisticated and literate, than those of either MAD or Trump. Humbug would be a communal endeavor, owned by the artists and writers who invested in it and contributed to it. Kurtzman, Will Elder, Arnold Roth, and Al would be their own bosses and stockholders, unrestrained by anyone but Kurtzman, the creator and editor. Hefner, feeling contrite about the failure of Trump, offered the collaboration free office space.

  In spite of Trump’s failure, Al’s faith in Kurtzman held firm. What was peculiar was not that Kurtzman risked walking off another cliff but that Al, given his cautious nature, so readily followed him. “It was a blow when Trump folded, but even then, when it seemed that the whole world was falling apart, I felt safe with Harvey.” Al invested all of his savings in Humbug; he even borrowed on his life insurance. He held back just enough money to cover the barest expenses, since Humbug was unlikely to pay anyone a salary for the first few issues. Money was tight, tight enough to limit the magazine to black and white on pulpy paper and to keep Harvey disciplined about deadlines. Even with all the staff’s savings invested, the Charlton Press of Derby, Connecticut, Humbug’s printer and distributor, would have to advance all costs.

  The atmosphere at Humbug was freewheeling and wacky. Al was on fire with creativity. “Humbug offered the opportunity to go on with what we had started at Trump in the same wonderful atmosphere. It was cartoon Camelot.” It was at Humbug that Al got the chance to use the unique engineering skills that would later dominate his work at MAD, particularly the fold-in. He drew a hyper-wordy cereal box that made fun of the then-recent tendency of containers to read like publications. The text-laden box itself made for hilarious reading, but Jaffee offered more. When cut out and assembled according to instructions on the opened and flattened box, it perfectly replicated a Kellogg’s cornflakes box. “Al’s way of drawing is distinctive,” says Arnold Roth, who worked with Al on Trump and Humbug. “He has a natural legibility. He uses language and art beautifully, and you always know it’s him talking. His graphic concept caters to the idea. You’re giving information when you draw. His idea of construction is always in character.”

  Before they were officially known as “Al Jaffee’s Mad Inventions,” his comical constructions first saw print in Humbug. In a satiric response to the tedious, intricate, balsa-wood model-airplane kits that consumed hours of hobbyists’ time in the 1950s and
gave glue sniffing a bad name, Al designed a variety of prefabricated model-making kits that, with a single yank of a string, would instantly transform themselves into the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, or the Sphinx. He might as well have been back in Zarasai with Harry, designing and flying sleds and whirling propellers.

  “I was at a neighborhood cocktail party in Babylon when one of my neighbors asked me how long I’d been working on the magazine without a salary. I realized it had been four or five months. Then he asked me, ‘Don’t you feel nervous?’ I remember that moment because I realized, much to my own surprise, that I wasn’t nervous. I couldn’t understand it. This was the happiest and most peaceful time of my professional life. I was enjoying what I was doing so much I must have decided to transfer all of my anxieties to Harvey, who I somehow believed would pull us through one way or another. He came up with MAD. He came up with Trump. He came up with Humbug. We were all still alive. What, me worry? Let him worry. Psychologically, it was my Scarlett O’Hara Gone with the Wind moment. If it didn’t work, I’d think about it tomorrow.”

  It didn’t work. Humbug failed for a number of reasons. Under-funding was certainly one of them. Another was that Kurtzman fell prey to his own irrepressible urge to innovate. By choosing to create a uniquely sized magazine—one that was smaller than a comic book—he doomed Humbug to insignificance or invisibility on newsstands, where it was either dwarfed by or hidden behind larger magazines. Al identified the problem in retrospect. “Looking to be innovative doesn’t always pay off unless you solve all the problems you create. A house on top of a telephone pole is very innovative, but who’s going to move in?”