Comic Strip Review: Al Jaffee Gets His Just Desserts by Al Jaffee
Al Jaffee was born in 1921 and is as of this writing still alive and working! He’s perhaps best known for his “Fold-Ins” and other features for MAD but also had enough of his independent work published to fill several volumes. In this book, it’s cartoons he had printed in the New York Herald Tribune between 1958 and 1966, with new material added for this 1980 compilation.
The new material is self-deprecating humor very much in the MAD tradition, suggesting that the cartoons in the book are terrible and unfunny. This is, of course, untrue.
Several short sequences, such as an art judge giving first prize to a window showing the outside, separate single panel gags. For example, a man pounding in a “Falling Rocks” sign causes an avalanche, and two trapeze artists forget which one of them was supposed to be the receiver. There’s a recurring character of a wickedly grinning little boy who likes to play tricks.
Some gags rely on outdated ethnic or gender stereotypes, though I did like the one where a Native American watches a program where the hero slaughters “Injuns” and tosses out the cereal that sponsors the program.
Recommended to humor fans as there were several volumes of this that should be easy to find through garage sales.
