Sergio Aragonés | Biography

Sergio Aragonés has been a cartoonist with Mad magazine for over four decades and has published many collections of his work. Aragonés's series of books about Groo, a simple, not-too-bright barbarian warrior whose exploits result in as much damage to his own cause as to his enemies, have been especially popular with readers. Done in collaboration with writer Mark Evanier, the "Groo" books are, according to Steve Raiteri in Library Journal, "a very funny, long-running series."

Aragonés was born in Castellon, Spain, in 1937, during the midst of the Spanish Civil War. To avoid the fighting, his family left Spain when he was only six months old and went to stay in a refugee camp in France for several years. At the outbreak of World War II the family migrated to Mexico, and Aragonés grew up in Mexico City. His father became a film producer, eventually making over one hundred movies in Mexico. "In elementary school and in high school," the cartoonist recounted in Cartoonist Profiles, "I was always drawing cartoons." Encouraged by an uncle who thought his work was funny, and who bought Aragonés the leading cartoon magazines of the time, the boy continued drawing cartoons, inspired by not only popular Mexican comic strips, but by U.S. strips like "Blondie" and "The Katzenjammer Kids."

Cartoonist from a Young Age

It was while he was still in high school that Aragonés sold his first cartoons. "One day a girl classmate, who had an enormous collection of my cartoons that I'd given her, told me that I should try and sell them professionally to some magazine," Aragonés explained in Cartoonist Profiles. Unknown to him, the classmate sent her friend's work to a little magazine, and the cartoons were published. "I got $1 a cartoon," Aragonés remembered. With the proceeds, the two friends went to dinner. "From then on I submitted cartoons regularly in Mexico," Aragonés noted.

After high school, Aragonés attended architectural school, largely because his family wanted him to enter a professional occupation. His own interests were more artistic, however. Every week, he drew six cartoons containing no words, and submitted them to the Mexican magazine Mañana, where they were published. At the same time, he began taking lessons with famed pantomimist Marcel Marceau, who had by then opened a school in Mexico City. Aragonés found himself leading a double life as part of a troupe of professional mimes. "I was working as an architect's assistant during the day and as a clown on weekends," he recalled of that time in Cartoonist Profiles.

Aragonés immigrated to the United States in 1962, hoping to make a living as a cartoonist. He arrived in New York City with only $8 in his pocket, not enough to get a hotel room for even one night. But a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village allowed him to sing Mexican songs in the evening and pass the bucket for donations from restaurant customers. A check for $200 from his fiancée also helped him out financially. Meanwhile, Aragonés' attempts to sell cartoons were proving unsuccessful; one agent told him his characters looked like Martians and the jokes--mostly sight gags told without captions--were incomprehensible. Things changed when he decided to try his luck with Mad magazine. "The first man I met there was Antonio Prohias who does the 'Spy vs. Spy' feature," Aragonés explained in Cartoonist Profiles. The two immigrant Hispanics--Prohias had fled Castro's Cuba for America--quickly hit it off, Prohias calling Aragonés "my brother" so often that a fellow Mad staffer mistook the young cartoonist for Prohias's real brother. Prohias decided to let the rest of the staff take a look at Aragonés's portfolio; when he heard laughter coming from the other room, the hopeful Aragonés figured the cartoons--a series about astronauts, then a hot topic in the news--were a hit. Al Feldstein, editor of Mad, came out, asked if he wanted to sell the cartoons, and offered $200. "Wow! I couldn't believe it!," Aragonés remembered. Since that time, Aragonés has had work in every single issue of Mad but one.

Finds Success at Mad

Aragonés' cartoons for Mad, always without captions or dialogue balloons, are sight gags. Most of them are very small and appear in the margins of Mad magazine's larger features. The book-length collections Mad Marginals and More Mad Marginals contain many of these cartoons. Aragonés has also specialized in the "A Mad Look at . . ." series, each installment of which consists of an average of twenty cartoons on the same subject, usually with a seasonal hook. Whatever the kind of cartoon he is drawing, Aragonés works directly in ink, without preliminary drawings. "I believe in the sketch as the final form of art--the spontaneity of the drawing--when you have to pencil and ink, you lose a lot of this spontaneity," he explained in Cartoonist Profiles.

In the early 1980s Aragonés teamed up with friend Mark Evanier to create the character Groo, who made his debut in the comic-book series "Groo the Wanderer." A satire of such sword-and-sorcery heroes as Conan the Barbarian, Groo is a master swordsman who never loses a battle. This would be a good thing, except that his stupidity is such that Groo never quite fights the right battle. Along with his faithful dog Rufferto, a runaway from a royal castle, the dim-witted-but-well-intentioned Groo encounters mad tyrants, evil sorcerers, and angry warriors in the land of Plentia. "Despite his destructiveness," Paul Brink wrote in School Library Journal, "Groo has a charming innocence." In one "Groo" adventure, during a great sea battle Groo manages to sink the enemy fleet of ships . . . and all the ships fighting on his side too. In another installment, when he accidently finds himself in possession of a magical amulet with immense powers, Groo tries to do good with it but fails miserably. And in the classic tale "One Fine Day," Groo manages to destroy an entire village without ever appearing in the story. Sarah Vandershaf, in discussing the "Groo the Wanderer" strip for Whole Earth Review, called the series "one of the most consistently funny comics around." Speaking to Shawna Ervin-Gore in an interview posted at the Dark Horse Comics Web Site, Aragonés revealed: "With Groo, all the stories come naturally. I can't see quitting Groo. We have so many stories to tell about him."