When celebrities ask for original MAD Mag art from Tom Richmond he provides an oversized print of the art as published in the magazine and requests they autograph their name next to their caricature.

He’s built up an impressive collection which he terms his Wall of Shame.

AVC: What artists were important to you growing up?

JD: Growing up, of course, Walt Disney. Donald Duck—the big feet—and Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. And Harold Foster, who drew Prince Valiant, and he also drew Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ bit. And Alex Raymond, who drew Flash Gordon and drew Secret Agent X-9 and Jungle Jim all at the same time. How he did that, I don’t know. I used to get, when I was small, about 12 years old, the Sunday paper. And the page was full of nothing but artwork. George McManus was on the front page, Maggie and Jiggs [of Bringing Up Father]. Beautiful stuff. Very tight, very funny, very illustrated. And then you’d turn the page, and there would be Alex Raymond, the top would be Jungle Jim, and then it would be Flash Gordon. And the third page, again, was Harold Foster, with all of the knights and everything. When I was, I guess, about 12 or 15 years old, I wrote Harold Foster a fan letter—they knocked me out, his Sunday pages—and he sent me a Sunday page of Prince Valiant making a saddle for a horse, and the bridle. From that day on, the horses that I drew, the cowboys and stuff like that, had to come from Harold Foster. And also a big impression was Fred Harman, who drew Red Ryder. He drew great guns and holsters that really had a hard grip on it. So, that’s about it

Today Jaffee, who will be 91 in March, is known for his own contraptions, many designed during his long relationship with Mad magazine. There’s the Mad Fold-in, the magazine’s inside back page, which cleverly turns one Jaffee work into another by folding one portion over another. There’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” in which a humdrum question leads to several unexpected sarcasms.

And then there are his sketches of “Mad inventions,” including an airbag suit and an improved beverage can. Some of them, like a smokeless ashtray or a multiroll toilet paper dispenser, have come to pass — much to Jaffee’s amusement. He’s been a primary contributor to Mad for more than 50 years, one of the chief purveyors of the humor that has shaped everything from “Airplane!” to The Onion to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” (Mad is a unit of DC Comics, which — like CNN — is a part of Time Warner.)

Amazing career.

Check out all 16.

They’re among the cartoonists who put MAD on the map in the 1950s. Over the next six decades, they blended celebrity caricature, pop-culture parody and political satire in a way that would influence American comedy from Saturday Night Live to The Onion and more. And some of them are still churning out gags for MAD, in defiance of the ever-expanding generation gap with the magazine’s young audience.

This certainly would have ranked high as far as events to go to.

Mankoff is describing the behind-the-scenes process of culling and curating The New Yorker’s annual Cartoon Issue (now on newstands and online). The issue offers not only an A-list collection of “funnies,” but also featured cartoons by such top talent as Barry Blitt, Roz Chast, Emily Flake, Zachary Kanin, Marc Rosenthal and Mark Alan Stamaty.

GEHR: When did you first approach The New Yorker?

CHAST: In April of ’78 I was still living at home with my parents, which was not good. I don’t think they wanted me there any more than I wanted to be there, but I didn’t know what else to do. I decided to call up The New Yorker even though I didn’t think my stuff was right for them. I found out that drop-off day was Wednesday. I didn’t know how to do it, but I had one of those brown envelopes with the rubber band. I left like sixty drawings in this thing. When I went back the next week to pick them up, there was a note inside that said, “Please see me. – Lee.” At first I couldn’t read it because it had this very loopy handwriting. There was a little anteroom and you had to be buzzed in. A very intimidating woman with red hair named Natasha used to sit there like she was guarding the gates. She read the note and said, “You can go in and see him.” It was a really scary feeling, like I wish I were not here. I still didn’t think I was going to sell a cartoon. I thought Lee [Lorenz] was going to give me some bullshit talk like, “This is very interesting work, little lady.” But they ended up buying a drawing. I was pretty shocked, but he said to come back every week with stuff.

I met Roz Chast last fall at the Festival of Cartoon Art. Funny lady. Great cartoonist.

File this one in the must-have category: The MAD Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010

Here’s Amazon’s description.

Al Jaffee’s ‘Fold-Ins’, which have graced the back page of “MAD Magazine” since 1964, have become an icon of American humour, issue after issue, year after year, each fold-in requires the reader to simply fold tab A to tab B to reveal the hidden gag- a simple idea that masks both the undeniable artistic ingenuity and comic-timing at play in Jaffee’s work. ‘The MAD Fold-In Box’ places Jaffee in his rightful place as the reigning clown prince of comic art.

Via Tom Richmond