Sergio Aragonés

Sergio Aragonés is an American cartoonist, originally born in Spain and raised in Mexico, best known for two things: his prolific contributions to Mad Magazine; 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.

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Works Sergio has contributed to with their own trope pages include:

• Groo the Wanderer: Creator, co-writer, artist.
• Mad Magazine: Prolific contributing cartoonist, best known for "A MAD Look at..." and "Drawn-Out Dramas"
• 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 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.

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Sergio Aragonés provides examples of the following tropes:

• 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).
• Badass Moustache
• Bloodless Carnage
• 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.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Sergio likes to sneak penises and bare-breasted women into some of his background scenes, particularly Groo the Wanderer. Given the cartoonish style of his work, it's more comedic than titillating.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Whenever Sergio addresses readers in his comics (see Obfuscating Stupidity, below).
• No Dialogue Episode: His "A Mad Look At..." segments for Mad almost never use dialogue.
• 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.
• Signature Style
• Silence Is Golden: Sergio is a master of this, especially evident by his works in Mad Magazine.
  • 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.