Originally published at: "Our greatest living cartoonist": An appreciation of Sergio Aragonés | Boing Boing
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Aragonés’ artwork is so wonderful, whether it is crammed in to a margin, or allowed to flow across a double page spread; full of humour, detail and animation. In Groo, Aragonés’ genius for inventing costumes and architecture really bursts from the page.
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As a kid, I was a big fan (I still am, though I don’t read it any more) of Groo, as well as all of that work around the corners of Mad. I never knew they were done by the same artist.
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This is fun watching Stan Lee (being Stan Lee) interviewing Aragonés plus you get to watch him draw (which he makes look so easy but, no surprise, is not)
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One thing I was very happy about with Al Jaffee is that he got so much recognition and acclaim in his late life. As he deserved! But I mean all too often we only see that sort of outpouring after someone has left us and I often think “dang no one was talking about this person at all a week ago and now everyone is saying how influential they were etc”. I guess maybe Betty white got that too. We need more of this. Sergio is a cartoon genius. An amazing talent and a super sweet human being. I had the privilege of working as a colorist for him towards the end of mad magazine’s run with its original editors (when they were still in NY) and got to get dinner with him in San Diego with a few other mad staff. He’s just a wonderful and generous person. He deserves all the recognition he can get. And I’m happy to know he knows he’s beloved from his interactions with fans.
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he also did the little animations for the Foul-ups, Bleeps and Bloopers show with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon in the mid-eighties.
another thing about his cartooning: I have heard several times over the years from other cartoonists (although I conveniently cannot remember who) that Aragones is super fast, the fastest pen in the game hands down.
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Yes, but that was on TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.
The other show was a short-lived knock off, and didn’t feature Clark or McMahon.
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I think I’m done getting tattoos, but…
Every time I read a copy of Mad, I look in the margins for the perfect Aragones gag. I’ll know it when I see it.
Also: The Peas twins were recently gifted a huge box of Mad from the 70s to 90s for their 17th birthday. Homework.
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God! I hope you’re ready for a lifetime of snappy answers!
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You should never stop reading Groo. It never gets old, and as you get older, you start to appreciate both Aragones’ brilliant background work and also Evanier’s razor-sharp satire much more. And the one joke is still funny.
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A wonderful wide-ranging interview/conversation via Cartoonist Kayfabe:
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The challenge will be getting a tattoo of one of his marginals that spans a corner… maybe on an elbow or side of the knee joint? But then you’ll have to keep your arms bent like C-3P0 so that folks can always see it correctly! 
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Does it involve “mulch”?
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I used to be in CAPS, a cartoonist group for writers/artists co-founded by SA. He’s a genuinely good human being to his core and one of our greatest immigrant artists living today. His life story is amazing. Hope I can get my hands on this isssue of TCJ.
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And the tallest!
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