Who Writes Chabad Shpy Comics? Mad Artist Al Jaffee

Al Jaffee, the brilliant artist who was responsible for much of the success of MAD magazine from 1955 to today, has had a largely unknown second job during 25 of his 55 MAD years -- creating the Shpy, the adventurous cartoon hero of the Chabad publication Moshiach Times.

Reporting in Monday's New York Times, Alison Leigh Cowan writes:

Young fans of the Shpy can be forgiven for skipping over the credits on Page 2 of the magazine. It is hard to fathom, though, how the rest of New York has barely noticed that the artist responsible for making the Shpy such a mensch is Al Jaffee. Yes, that Al Jaffee. The same 89-year-old bad boy whose work has been appearing for more than half a century in the occasionally rude, irreverent, and bawdy pages of Mad magazine.

“Al Jaffee’s Mad Life,” the new biography of Mr. Jaffee just published by HarperCollins, flags the connection but even it quickly moves on without exploring how Mr. Jaffee came to work for the magazine or how the odd pairing has worked out.

Stuffed into a tiny office above a children’s museum on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, the staff of The Moshiach Times seems unruffled by Mr. Jaffee’s other pursuits and notes that the Shpy is easily the magazine’s most popular feature. The magazine has roughly 10,000 subscribers who pay $15 a year, according to the staff. Money, however, is not the point. The magazine, whose title refers to the Hebrew word for Messiah, was started in 1980 by Chabad-Lubavitch’s Tzivos Hashem arm as a way to promote Jewish values among the young. Embedded in the cover design is the proclamation, “We want Moshiach now.”

Jaffee is best known for the MAD fold-in pages he created in response to the fold-outs that became popular when he was getting started with MAD.  The Times has an interactive feature on their website that lets you manipulate some of his classic fold-ins with your cursor.  

In the video below, Jaffee reflects on how the inspiration for his art came from his recollections of life in a small Lithuanian village, his new biography, and the process he uses in creating the fold-ins.  Enjoy!