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Sergio Aragonés Domenech (born 1937) is a cartoonist and writer.
Born in Spain, Aragonés emigrated with his family due to the Spanish Civil War and settled in Mexico. He made his first professional sale in 1954 but continued to doodle humorous cartoons while studying architecture. In 1962, Aragonés moved to the United States. He currently resides and works in Ojai, California.
Aragonés became a contributor to MAD Magazine in 1963. He was famous for his wordless "drawn-out dramas" or "marginals" appearing in the margins and between panels of the magazine, both horizontally and vertically as well as occasionally around corners. Prior to Aragonés' work for MAD, the marginals had been text jokes. According to Aragonés the staff of MAD enjoyed his marginals, but expected to only last one or two issues. They did not expect him to be able to maintain the steady stream of small cartoons needed for each issue. Aragonés has provided marginals for every issue of MAD since 1963 excepting one (his contributions to that issue were lost by the Post Office). In addition, Aragones has a feature section in the current issues.
In 1967 he began illustrating full stories for DC Comics on such titles as Plop! and Bat Lash. Aragonés claims that he originally looked for work in the comic book industry and was warned off. He was told that he would be better paid working for MAD Magazine.
In the 1980s he created the humorous barbarian comic book Groo the Wanderer (so named because he sought a name which meant nothing in any language) with Mark Evanier. As a creator-owned book, Groo has survived the bankruptcy of a number of publishers. The book was initially published by Pacific Comics, then Marvel Comics under their Epic imprint, then Image Comics and currently Dark Horse Comics.
Sergio Aragonés is also the author of a book of cartoons entitled Madly Yours.
Aragonés has written and drawn many other comic books, including:
- Actions Speak is a series of humorous comics without any dialogue.
- Fanboy studies comics and society's reaction to comics from the point of view of a self-described "fanboy".
- Boogeyman is a series of generally humorous horror stories.
His work can be found in other compilations, including The Big Book of the Weird, Wild West, in which Aragonés illustrates a retelling of the Donner Party incident.
See also: Don Martin, Dave Berg, Al Jaffee
External link
- Sergio Aragonés' personal site (http://www.sergioaragones.com/)
- Aragonés' entry at the International Museum of Cartoon Art (http://cartoon.org/aragones.htm)de:Sergio Aragonés