{"id":3231,"date":"2008-03-31T03:11:11","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T03:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3231"},"modified":"2008-03-31T03:11:11","modified_gmt":"2008-03-31T03:11:11","slug":"mad_magazines_f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3231","title":{"rendered":"MAD Magazine’s Fold-in Illustrator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Genzlinger<\/a>: <\/p>\n

THIS was going to be a simple artist-at-work article about Al Jaffee, a man who could lay claim to being the world\u2019s oldest adolescent and who just now is enjoying a fresh burst of public and professional recognition. The idea was to look in on him as he created the latest installment of a feature he has been drawing for Mad magazine since, incredibly, 1964.
\nBut because that feature is the Mad Fold-In, which embeds a hidden joke within a seemingly straightforward illustration, it should come as no surprise that the simple article ended up being not so simple after all. There were times when Mr. Jaffee, who faced a serious health scare over the last few weeks, thought it might be something closer to a eulogy.
\nIf you were young at any time in the last 44 years, you know the fold-in: the feature on the inside of Mad\u2019s back cover that poses a question whose answer is found by folding the page in thirds. September 1978: \u201cWhat colorful fantastic creature is still being exploited even after it has wiggled and died?\u201d A picture of a garish butterfly, folded, becomes an equally garish Elvis.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Genzlinger<\/a>: <\/p>\n

THIS was going to be a simple artist-at-work article about Al Jaffee, a man who could lay claim to being the world\u2019s oldest adolescent and who just now is enjoying a fresh burst of public and professional recognition. The idea was to look in on him as he created the latest installment of a feature he has been drawing for Mad magazine since, incredibly, 1964.
\nBut because that feature is the Mad Fold-In, which embeds a hidden joke within a seemingly straightforward illustration, it should come as no surprise that the simple article ended up being not so simple after all. There were times when Mr. Jaffee, who faced a serious health scare over the last few weeks, thought it might be something closer to a eulogy.
\nIf you were young at any time in the last 44 years, you know the fold-in: the feature on the inside of Mad\u2019s back cover that poses a question whose answer is found by folding the page in thirds. September 1978: \u201cWhat colorful fantastic creature is still being exploited even after it has wiggled and died?\u201d A picture of a garish butterfly, folded, becomes an equally garish Elvis.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21,39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}