Spy vs. Spy was the creation of Cuban political cartoonist Antonio Prohías. After drawing one too many unflattering cartoons featuring Fidel Castro, Prohías was forced to flee Cuba for the United States in 1960. Luckily, he ran into the open arms of MAD publisher Bill Gaines. Spy vs. Spy premiered in MAD magazine #60 (1961), and remained a feature of each issue until ill-health forced Prohías’ retirement in 1987. A series of other cartoonists including Bob Clarke (with gag writer Duck Edwing) and Peter Kuper have kept the feature going to the present day.
“You are about to meet the black Spy and the white Spy — the two MADest spies in the whole world. Their antics are almost as funny as the CIA’s…When it comes to intrigue, these guys make it way outtrigue. They are the only two spies we know who haven’t the sense to come in out of the cold. But they have a ball – mainly trying to outwit each other.”
Plop!, “The New Magazine of Weird Humor!”, was a comic book published by DC Comics in the mid 1970s. There were 24 issues in all and the series ran from Sept./Oct. 1973 to Nov./Dec. 1976.
Each issue was hosted by three ghoulish characters – Cain, Abel, and Eve – who would try to outgross each other with a story. To wet your appetite for the foul …
… here is the tale about a gourmet diner whose love for frog legs leads to a predictable amphibian revenge – he is left without his own legs, doomed to navigate the world on a trolley.
Plop! employed a number of the great minds of MAD magazine fame – Basil Wolverton and Wallace Wood provided distinctive some amazingly twisted covers for the first 19 issues, while Sergio Aragones and Dave Manak drew many of the more cartoonish tales and most of the surrounding banter between the three hosts.
Pretty amazingly excellent. If only more of these sorts of comics were still around I think kids might read more!
Cartoonist Basil Wolverton has a pretty excellent claim to fame; in 1946 he won a competition that challenged children and adults alike, all over the world, to create the image of “Lena the Hyena, the world’s ugliest woman.” The ad for the competition ran in the Li’l Abner newspaper strip, as well as Life magazine, and the challenge was judged by the likes of Boris Karloff, Frank Sinatra and Salvador Dali – and out of 500,000 entries, Basil’s was chosen. Thus, Lena’s apperance began the “spaghetti and meatballs” style Wolverton became so renowned for.
It was considered outrageous for the 1940’s and 50’s, but his ingeniously surreal depictions of grotesque people were just too amazing, and amazingly horrifying to be ignored! He continued to be the “Producer of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet” (as he dubbed it) for several decades, doing a large variety of popular work in humor, horror and science fiction, and worked steadily for publications like Mad, and later Plop!, and his beautifully bizarre creations are still celebrated by galleries, clothing companies, and fans around the world.
Al Jaffee is 90 years old, but given the subject of his work, one could argue that he has been an adolescent for the past 75 years. Since 1964 Jaffee has been putting that snide wit to use by poking fun at every aspect of popular culture in his amazing fold-ins for Madmagazine. The entire concept for the feature (which has been present in all but three issues since 1964) came from Jaffee’s desire to go against the grain and poke fun at the foldout fad that began in the 60s.
A Mad fold-in consists of a single drawing, with a paragraph of text underneath, and a panel across the top with a question. Each fold-in also features instructions on how to manipulate the Fold-In, as well as a picture illustrating the procedure. When the paper is folded in correctly, the remaining visible text underneath the picture becomes the answer to the question, and the picture itself changes into a fresh image reflecting the new text.
Amazingly, Jaffee creates each fold-in by hand, without the help of much technology. Sure, he sometimes uses a computer for typographic stuff, but otherwise all the work is done with pencil and paper. In 2008, Jaffee told one newspaper, “I never see the finished painting folded until it’s printed in the magazine. I guess I have that kind of visual mind where I can see the two sides without actually putting them together.”
Jaffee continues to do the Fold-In for Mad, as well as creating specially commissioned artwork. Mad’s oldest regular contributor, Jaffee’s work has appeared in over 450 issues of the magazine. Jaffee’s first three fold-ins featured gags about the Elizabeth Taylor–Eddie Fisher–Richard Burton love triangle, Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller‘s battle for the 1964 Republican Presidential nomination, and The Beatles‘ departure back to England. Since then topics for the Mad feature have covered everything from Guitar Hero and South Park to teen pregnancy and Jay Leno. “Before anyone knew it,” wrote comics historian Christopher Irving, “the hundreds of Fold-Ins created a timeline of American history, political satire, and entertainment.”
Click here to experience the joy of a fold-in on the New York Times website!
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