Comics events in DC happen with surprising regularity these days - here's pics of a few events I attended late in the year.

Comic book writer Jim Ottaviani signed his new book 'Feynman' at the National Air & Space Museum. Notwithstanding the last photo, he had so many people I barely had a chance to speak with him:









Comics historian Rick Marschall at the Library of Congress:







Batman movie producer Michael Uslan discussing his book The Boy Who Loved Batman at Discovery (note the signature he uses):









MAD magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee and Mary-Lou Weisman signing their book at the DCJCC:













Al Jaffee's bookplate that he uses instead of signing due to a tremor.


Al Jaffee's bookplate that he uses instead of signing the biography Al Jaffee's Mad Life (by Mary-Lou Weisman).


A display of Big Nate books at Barnes and Noble.


Cartoon books for sale at the National Cathedral.

Authors Out Loud: Mary-Lou Weisman & Al Jaffee Washington DCJCC

Mary-Lou Weissman - author, Al Jaffee- illustrator
Al Jaffee's Mad Life: A Biography
Thursday, December 15, 7:30 pm
$10, $8 Members/Seniors/Students

At 89, iconic American cartoonist Al Jaffee remains MAD magazine's oldest and most prolific contributor. Behind Jaffee's trademark dark humor lurks an even darker story of a childhood spent between two alien worlds, Lithuania and America. Mary-Lou Weisman tells the off-kilter life story of the man who countless fans know and love as the inventor of MAD's "fold-ins" and "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions."

Al Jaffee's Mad Life is illustrated by more than 65 original four-color original drawing by the master himself.

Mary-Lou Weisman is a journalist and author whose books include My Baby Boomer Baby Book, Traveling While Married, and Intensive Care: A Family Love Story.

Al Jaffee is an award-winning cartoonist whose work has appeared in more 440 issues of MAD magazine.

"Al Jaffee's Mad Life lays bare in harrowing yet often riotous detail how a Southern boy, twice uprooted by his mother to Lithuanian shtetls on the eve of World War II, grew up to become a tireless satirist for some of America's cheekier magazines."
-The New York Times

"It's an unnerving biography with a moving graphic novel hidden inside it."
-Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS

Partner: 16th Street J's Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery Off the Wall series

Date: Thursday, December 15, 2011
Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Address:
1529 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
United States

If you'd like to attend this event you can purchase tickets online.

Tom Toles' editorial cartoon today is based on the fold-in by famed MAD cartoonist Al Jaffee. Here's a good article on Jaffee from the NY Times, and some online fold-ins.

Jaffee is nominated for the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben award this weekend (and Richard Thompson's up for best strip) and I believe he will win it. I don't know if Toles was making a prediction, or just was reminded of Jaffee's work, but according to Dave Astor, Wiley's made a bet who'll win by doing an early Sunday strip - check the Post on Sunday and see if either of us was right.

And for those reading it online, with less fold-in experience than us long-time Mad readers, here's what it looks like folded: