The Fabuleous Fifties

Juicy Jaffee

Saturday leftover day.

I got a very friendly e-mail from Al Jaffee about my monday post, which I am sharing with you here.

Thanks for your wonderful e-mail. You have been kind and very supportive of my work. Your help with TALL TALES is deeply appreciated. The sample book I received recently looks wonderful. Charlie Kochman at Abrams publishing did a super job. It is in hard cover and will be out end of summer. It is perfect for foreign distribution since it is basically all pantomime.

I would love to go to your blog but I'll have to get someone to show me how. So far all I really know is how to e-mail.

Thanks again for helping TALL TALES on your blog. I am grateful. The TT format came about because the unspoken rule in US newspapers in the 1950s was that to get a new comic in it had to knock a current one out. I decided that the only space available is the vertical area. That worked.

Willie Weirdie was not named after my dear old pal Willie Elder (although he was always weird in the funniest most entertaining ways). I actually adopted it from a MAD story by Larry Siegel in which he had a throwaway character named Aunt Weirdie.

My playboy work was a one shot move. I was unemployed after HUMBUG failed so I did a dozen or so pieces that I sent to Hefner and he bought all of them. Them came MAD with steadier work and I stopped speculating with magazine submissions.

I doubt Stephen Colbert will review TALL TALES. After all, how can you quote a wordless book?

Best Wishes,

al j

The Playboy remark is concerning a cartoon by his hand I had found in an early sixties Playboy. Apparently there are more, although Al didn't say how many were finally sold. I hope Steve Colbert will have Al Jaffee on again when the book comes out. He can always use it to assume it's a debunking of Obama's campaign promises.