Sergio Aragones

[Rick Bradford]

Well, from MAD the magazine (at least that I grew up with) the other obvious guy is Don Martin, I guess. I still like his work but when I was a kid I really loved it. I still love his character names and sound effects though.

I think it goes without saying that the original stable from the comic book days are gods.

[Visitor Q]

Prohias is my all time favorite from MAD, then it's a real tie between Jaffee and Argones. I agree though, Don Martin is awesome indeed and would be 4th for me. Let's not forget about Kurtzman! 

Dave Berg is the one I never cared for myself...

Jason

[Rick Bradford]

I like looking at Dave Berg's work. Never really was into the writing but the artwork does something for me -- maybe because it stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the mag. In the '70s it was sort of like somebody on staff gave their dad a couple of pages every month.

[Visitor Q]

Yeah I don't know, Berg never did anything for me. I mean by no means do I hate the guy, I just am not a fan of his work especially when compare to the other we mentioned above.

I am really looking for the right fold-in of Jaffee's to buy, would love to have one hanging on my wall.

I got a really nice Prohias watercolor I got from Halprin. When I told my gf how much it was I thought she was going to shoot me for buying it but she loves it soooo much that she had it framed for me and insisted on me buying it.

Jason

[fishnuts]

Sergio was sure nice when I ran into him.
He drew this for me to put on the wall in my shop: Gadzooks! A Collector's Paradise.

[Visitor Q]

WOW! That's really nice, can I ask... Free?

Jason

[fishnuts]

Actually, I had been at his panel and shortly after he was at the Guest Table in the dealers room.  Fans were flocking about when he pulled out a small folio of drawings.  I got my hands on that and after a few hectic minutes(with entirely too rude people looking over my shoulder) I selected a Groo drawing in my price range..  I had been getting original art with my store name in it and this piece worked perfectly with plenty of space for Groo to be saying 'Gadzooks!" as  hungry fish were taking bites out of his butt while he was trying to cross a stream.

Sergio asked about: Why gadzooks? And I explained to him what I had been doing.  Immediately he suggested, AND insisted,  that he draw me a piece intentionally incorporating my store name into it.  His idea for the sound effect of blade whizzing thru guts to be GADZOOKS!...mine for the opponents thought balloon repeating such and for the little rat bottlom-left corner that's haulin' ass to be thinkin' 'Gadzooks!'.  So...a bit of a collaborative effort. [Insert chuckle here]
I still remember what a miracle of the creative process that I got to witness as he first pencil sketched, then inked and finished out the drawing.  I paid him for his craft.

[Rick Bradford]

And he seems to enjoy it all the while! Nice guy.

I saw one of his drawing presentations at San Diego one year. For about an hour he talked and drew and talked and drew. By the end of the presentation he'd filled an entire dry-erase board (proabably 8 x 4', something like that).

You should've seen his face when he realized that he'd been using a regular marker the whole time. So somebody at the hotel probably got a hell of a nice souvenir!

[Visitor Q]

You should've seen his face when he realized that he'd been using a regular marker the whole time. So somebody at the hotel probably got a hell of a nice souvenir!

LOL! Oh that's classic!!

Jason