An anthology of the innovative vertical comic strip by the legendary MAD Magazine contributor—with an introduction by Stephen Colbert.
Tall Tales was a one-of-a-kind newspaper strip that could only have come from the mind of Al Jaffee. While other newspaper strips are square, single-panel or multiple-panel horizontal gag cartoons, Jaffee, known for the Fold-In in MAD Magazine, once again altered the format of his work to create a vertical strip—the first, and last, in newspaper history.
The original comic strip was syndicated internationally by the New York Herald Tribune from 1957–1963. This anthology contains the best 120 wordless strips out of over 2,200, scanned from the original files. The book features a new preface by Jaffee and an introduction by Stephen Colbert.
I first met Al Jaffee's work as a kid reading Mad Magazine. This collection of cartoons comes from another, but parellel, universe. Be sure to read the preface first. As always, his "stories" have a little twist to them. If you haven't seen any Al Jaffee (What! Of course you have.) he can be thought of in the same breath (boy, that's a lousy piece of wording) as Chas Addams, only usually not quite so dark. This one is going into my bathroom library to amuse my visitors.