If you're at all like me, you grew up with Mad Magazine. Spy vs. Spy, the movie spoofs, The Lighter Side, and of course, Alfred E. Neuman. "What, me worry?", indeed. But the part of the magazine I looked forward to the most was the last page. It was there that existed what I felt to be the true comic genius of each issue. Of course, I'm talking about Al Jaffee's Fold-In. After I read the entire issue, I'd come to the final page and pour over every detail, trying to dicipher the riddle before the actual folding took place. My friends would look at the words of the message below and try to figure it out, but I thought that was cheating. Even when we did manage to come up with a semblance of the answer, it was always different, better somehow, when the true solution was revealed by folding the page and completing the picture.

Part of it was the ritual of course. Making sure the fold was crisp and straight, but most of it was seeing how the mind of Al Jaffee was able to place the final image in plain sight, and yet still hide it from us. We'd then unfold it look at the whole, and then re-fold it, again and again. Each time it got funnier. 

In what has to be the most deserving compilation of published material since the Bloom County Anthology, Chronicle Books is releasing a four volume set of every fold-in from 1964-2010, featuring 410 of these wonderfully inane riddles. The collection looks to be beautiful, bound in red cloth with essays from Pete Doctor, Neil Genzlinger, and Jules Feiffer. Each of the fold-ins is also represented in the book by a completed version so you get to see the before and after without having to crease the page.

Head on over to Brainpickings.org to see some examples contained in the book, as well as an interview with the man himself. You can also check out a link to a very cool interactive feature that the New York Times did in 2008 that allows you to digitally fold the page. After you pour over the details and try to figure it out first, of course.