Al Jaffee - Awards and Recognition

Awards and Recognition

Jaffee won the National Cartoonists Society Advertising and Illustration Award for 1973, its Special Features Award for 1971 and 1975, and its Humor Comic Book Award for 1979. In 2008, he won the Reuben Awards' Cartoonist of the Year.

In 2005, the production company Motion Theory created a video for recording artist Beck's song "Girl" using Jaffee's Mad Fold-ins as inspiration; Jaffee's name appears briefly in the video, on a television screen.

The March 13, 2006, episode of The Colbert Report aired on Jaffee's 85th birthday, and comedian Stephen Colbert saluted the artist with a Fold-in birthday cake. The cake featured the salutary message "Al, you have repeatedly shown artistry & care of great credit to your field." When the center section of the cake was removed, the remainder read, "Al, you are old."

That was not Jaffee's first interaction with the comedian. In 2010, he recalled:

I got a call from The Daily Show—they asked me if I would contribute a Fold-in to their book, America. I said I'd be happy to do it. When I was done, I called up the producer who'd contacted me, and I said, "I've finished the Fold-in, where shall I send it?" And he said—and this was a great compliment—"Oh, please Mr. Jaffee, could you deliver it in person? The whole crew wants to meet you." And that's where I met Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and all the writers, and they told me it was our work in Mad that inspired them. Not me, particularly, but us, generally... They said, "Without you guys, we wouldn't be here." And I felt really good about that.