Sergio Aragonés Domenech (born September 6, 1937) is an American cartoonist, originally born in Spain and raised in Mexico, best known for two things: his prolific contributions to MAD; and the comic book Groo the Wanderer, which he created, draws, and co-writes with Mark Evanier.
Many have claimed that Sergio is the fastest cartoonist in the world today, a skill he demonstrates with sketches at his live appearances. He has been honored with every major award in the field of comic-book art, including the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, he's also getting on in years and he's had to slow down his production to a small degree.
List of works by Sergio:
- Bat Lash: Co-creator
- Groo the Wanderer: Creator, co-writer, artist.
- The Mighty Magnor and Fanboy: Co-creator, co-writer and artist. Worked with the same people (Evanier, Sakai, and Luth) as Groo.
- MAD: Prolific contributing cartoonist, best known for "A MAD Look at...", "Drawn-Out Dramas" and especially his MAD Marginals, gags, appearing around the borders in nearly every issue since he started.
- TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes: Sergio created an Animated Credits Opening sequence for the show involving backstage workers, an elephant and a marching band; as well as bumpers and transition scenes involving the workers.
- Weekly World News: For a short time he drew a "How many X can you spot in this picture?" type of feature for them.
- Bart Simpson Comics by Bongo Comics.
- Sergio Aragonés Destroys DC
- Sergio Aragonés Massacres Marvel
- Sergio Aragonés Stomps Star Wars, published by Dark Horse Comics (which held the SW comics rights at the time).
- Sergio Aragonés Funnies, also published by Bongo. Gags and autobiographical stories.
- Usagi Yojimbo: Sergio contributed a story idea once and inked a (different) story once for this otherwise solo comic by Groo letterer Stan Sakai.
Tropes exhibited by Sergio and/or his works include:
- Author Avatar: Often appears as himself doing the introductions to his comic book work, and sometimes together with his collaborators as well (e.g. Groo's co-writer Mark Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai, and colorist Tom Luth).
- Cast of Snowflakes: Varies by work. In crowd scenes, Sergio makes every effort to give everyone a unique appearance (which is very hard with his art style), although in his shorts you see characters reused very often.
- Cool Old Guy: Very much so.
- Funny Background Event: Most easily seen in his "Drawn Out Dramas" in the margins of MAD magazine, but also appears frequently in crowd shots.
- Funny Terrain Cross Section: Any underground scene isn't complete without at least a few easter eggs or sight gags buried in the layers of dirt.
- Just a Stupid Accent: Whenever Sergio addresses readers in his comics (see Obfuscating Stupidity, below).
- Ms. Fanservice: As much as Sergio is a bigfoot cartoonist, when a strip calls for a beautiful female character, Wow!, can he deliver!
- No-Dialogue Episode: His "A MAD Look At..." segments for MAD almost never use dialogue.
- He produced two trade paperbacks for Dark Horse Comics containing nothing but original comics without dialogue, Louder Than Words and the follow-up, Actions Speak.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Whenever Sergio addresses the reader in his comics, he "speaks" with a heavily-accented pidgin English, even though he's fluently multilingual in Real Life. Unfortunately, sometimes he gets booked for events by people who think he really doesn't speak English... and hire a translator as a result. Sergio ends up feigning his non-English to avoid embarrassing his hosts and so that the translator would be paid.
- Old Shame: Has expressed regret in doing gags involving stereotypical homosexuals in older issues of MAD.
- Promoted Fanboy: While still a student in Mexico, Sergio loved to read MAD even though he barely spoke English at the time, which also meant that his favorite segment was the wordless Spy Vs. Spy strips by Antonio Prohías. After moving to America he became one of the most prominent contributors to the publication, having appeared non-stop for over 50 years, and in fact the first experience he had when he walked into their offices was to be immediately glomped by Prohías who enthusiastically referred to him as "Mi hermano, Sergio!".
- Silence Is Golden: Sergio is a master of this, especially evident by his works in MAD.
- Parodied in one of MAD's anniversary issues, when they claimed that he wrote an entire treastise on nuclear weaponry that was their all-time most wordy article. They further claimed that he stopped when he discovered that they did not pay by the word.
- Also parodied when they issued a "correction" revealing that, by accident, the speech bubbles had been omitted from his comics for the past several decades and that they hoped to fix the problem soon.
- Write Who You Know: Sergio's dog Rufferto inspired Groo's dog of the same name, and is drawn identically in Author Avatar or autobiographical sequences from Groo and other books. A few other Groo characters are modeled after real people: Action Girl Chakaal is based on Sergio's wife Charlene, and Weaver and Scribe are based on Mark Evanier and Stan Sakai.
