Anthony Prohias’ Spy vs Spy, the wordless comic strip, featuring two agents, one dressed in black, the other in white, trying to outdo the other, on endless Cold War themes.
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Amritbhai Jhunjunwalla introduced me to Al Jaffee. And Don Martin and Sergio Aragones and “All the Usual Bunch of Idiots” who graced the pages of MAD magazine in the late 1970s.
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Amritbhai, had a “second-hand magazine and newspaper” kabadiwalla store, down the road from where I lived, called KOKILA PAPER MART.
“MED Magzin joye? Pachware... pachware... in the ‘backside’ you will find… ‘backside’, bau MED magazine na copy chho,” he said to me, waving vaguely to the rear part of his cubby hole.
And so I’d sit, in the “backside” of his dust-laden, cobwebbed little book shelf of a store, pouring over issue after issue of this irreverent, iconic, inventive magazine, and it was an insatiable hunger I felt, the spoofs, the satire, the sarcasm, the epic aspects of popular culture that this bevy of writers and cartoonists, lampooned—I had entered the insane world of Mad Magazine, serious statements being made via light hearted sketches… Alfred E Neuman’s face, massive gap in one front tooth, beaming out at me, ‘What me worry?’
My love for the pun and the cartoons, I would have to lay at the feet of this MAD world. I turned each page to experience an entire magazine created through cartoons, quips and smart-alecky speech bubbles.
What first hit the reader, were the movie spoofs… Tootsie… was the Hoffman-Hoffwoman film….Raiders of a Lost Art, Crymore vs Crymore... Basically It Stinks…the list was endless.
One then encountered, Don Martin’s bulbous nosed, hinged footed characters who “Pfft-Frack-ed”, “Pop-sproing-ging-ed”, “plorched” and “FOGROON klubble-klubbled” their way through life.
Anthony Prohias’ Spy vs Spy, the wordless comic strip, featuring two agents, one dressed in black, the other in white, trying to outdo the other, on endless Cold War themes.
But the two regular features that always got me for their sheer inventiveness, and their surprising humour also their seeking audience involvement, were Al Jaffee’s.
The first was his epic FOLD INs, illustrations with text feature, on the inside of the magazines back cover, that seemed at first glance to deliver a straightforward message; but when the magazine was folded in thirds, both illustration and text were transformed into something entirely different and unexpected often with a liberal leaning or authority-defying message—magazines till that point had a fold out, Jaffee introduced a FOLD IN, thereby “mutilating” the magazine.
The first FOLD IN he created seemingly had a young Richard Burton and a young Liz Taylor; unfolded she was with Burton, folded she had left him for a younger guy.
The FOLD INs were a reflection of the zeitgist, with themes that included Vietnam, illegal drug use, and feminism.
Then came Al Jaffee’s other great contribution, “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”.
The format always featured a person asking a dumb or obvious question, and the person’s three snappy, but sarcastic replies.
One cartoon showed a cop stopping a speeding lady driver, she asks, “Was I speeding?” The motorcycle cop’s three wry replies:
A. No you were standing still, it’s the scenery that’s been whizzing by at 90mph.
B. No I got lonely, and decided to stop you for a quick chat.
C. Sorry could you repeat that, my ears are still ringing from the sonic boom as you whizzed past me.
In another cartoon, Jaffee drew a fish stall, with a signboard that read “FRESH FISH”. The customer asks, “Is it fresh?”; the frustrated fishmongers’ three replies:
A. No its very well mannered.
B. No we’re testing a new and improved room deodorant.
C. No, it’s just that I don’t how to spell “ROTTEN”.
A third one had a man and his car wrapped around a tree. A passer-by stupidly asks him, “Have an accident?”. The victim replies:
A. No thanks, I already have one.
B. No I’m a modern sculptor.
C. No I’m starting a junk yard.
Al Jaffee was perhaps, the world’s, longest surviving cartoonist, till he passed away last week aged 102.
Eighty-odd years of uninterrupted brilliance.
Al Jaffee. Rest well, sir. You were truly MAD.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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