Sergio Aragones

Sergio Aragonés (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 and has continued to doodle humorous cartoons throughout his tenure studying architecture. Aragonés was a long-time contributor to MAD Magazine. 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's 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 steam of small cartoons needed for each issue. Aragonés has provided marginals for every issue of MAD since 1963 excepting one .

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 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 Donner Party incident.

See also: Don Martin, Dave Berg, Al Jaffee