I know this is not really Underground but I thought I would share. When I saw Sergio at the NY show over the weekend he explained to me that the four covers I had of his one book could be piece together to form one big picture. Once I saw this I got the idea for him to draw something that when all four comix where put together it would form a picture as well...
Jason :01_bounce:
That is cool!
Aragones Code?
Thanks!
hahaha You mean like a secret code? Like Morris code?
Jason
Like Da Vinci.
:icon_thumright:
Now I just need some Jaffee art and I will have art by all my MAD favorites.
Jason
Does that include Don Martin?
He was a favorite cartoonist of mine!
Don Martin is awesome, no doubt but Prohias, Aragones and Jaffee are my 3 favorites. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't like the others, it's just that those 3 have always been my favorite. Good call on Martin though...
Jason
Sergio's great. A real pleasant guy to chat with too.
Quote from: Rick Bradford on December 16, 2007, 01:38:05 PM
Sergio's great. A real pleasant guy to chat with too.
Hey Rick, welcome to the boards.
Yeah he was awesome! Very warm and friendly to talk to, extremely nice. It was really an honor for me to meet him as I have been a fan since I can remember.
Jason
Yeah, me too -- grew up on his cartoons in MAD. He's the guy who, nearly 20 years ago, really made "nothing new under the sun" hit home for me. I was showing him a bunch of my cartoons at a convention and when he got to a certain one he reached over to a stack of his books and started flipping through one. When he found the page he was after he showed me his vastly superior version of the exact same gag. I was a little embarrassed because I knew it was entirely likely that I'd seen it before and that's where my brain got the idea. But he made me feel very comfortable about it, explaining that it's not so much the joke itself but rather how you tell it and making it yours.
If any of you ever get an opportunity to see one of his "chalk talk"-style presentations (he used to do them at San Diego Comic-Con) I recommend it. He's an entertaining guy.
The thing that truly amazes me about the guy is his ability to express a characters thoughts and feelings through his drawings. You can look at a person he draws and right away tell what that person is feeling, it's amazing! He really has a knack for telling a story without words.
Jason
Yeah, that's one of the fun things about his drawing presentations. He can draw at lightning speed -- it's not polished and ready for print, of course, but everything that needs to be there is there...
Yeah... It's too bad Prohias is no longer with us. =[
Nice to see Jaffee is still banging stuff out, have you ever met him? I would love too but have not.
Jason
Never have met Al Jaffee but I'd also like to.
Not sure if Jaffee puts himself out there much, I mean he's got to be what? 80 something?
Never the less, the guy is AMAZING!
Who else do you fancy from MAD? IMO MAD is the influence between so much that we see today.
Jason
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.
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! :notworthy:
Dave Berg is the one I never cared for myself...
Jason
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.
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
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.
WOW! That's really nice, can I ask... Free?
Jason
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.
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!
Quote from: Rick Bradford on December 21, 2007, 07:48:45 PM
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