Sergio Aragones
"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
...and his wordless pantomime comics, like his Mad Marginals. I could probably go on an on for quite a while about why I consider him a genius at cartooning, but honestly, if you don't already see why it's just going to be wasted breath. Instead, I'd rather talk about something I find nearly as fascinating as his work: a noticeable mid-career jump in skill.
Nine years later, "Groo the Wanderer" finally saw print. At this point, Aragones' work is pretty similar. The crowd scenes and pantomimed action play a large role, and his drawing style is very similar to his work of the previous two decades. Here's a page from Starslayer #5, an early Groo appearance:
Let's fast-forward another eight years, the point at which I discovered "Groo" myself. This is the cover to issue #69, the issue that was on the newsstands when I first read "Groo."
But by this point (and it's hard to nail down an exact point), something has happened to the way Aragones is drawing characters. It's still recognizably his work, but let's compare two "pantomime" scenes (the first from 1982, the second from 1990):
The easiest comparisons are the way that Aragones draws the same character's nose or feet. Groo has gone from having flippers for feet to confident, cartoony feet. Let's get even more basic (first panel from 1982, the second from 1990):
I have to point out again, there's nothing wrong with the first example. It's the work of an award-winning cartoonist - a man working on a national level and receiving awards and praise for what he does. But one of the things I find fascinating about Sergio Aragones is that in his early-40's, there is a distinctive jump in his ability. After working professionally for nearly 25 years, something happened in his work that results in things like this (also from issue #69):
This is undeniably complex, brilliant cartooning that readers can lose themselves in if they so choose.
"Fight the Power" - Public Enemy
All artists have their batch of influences - artists that you keep returning to in order to see how they had solved a similar problem. Although I work chiefly in printmaking these days, comic books (and I don't mean that in a general term, which is why we're talking about one artist in particular) were the first art form that grabbed my attention, still exert a huge influence on how I approach what I do. Sergio Aragones is my favorite cartoonist. If you're a comics fan, you'd know him as the guy who's drawn "Groo the Wanderer" seemingly forever, and if you're not, you'd know him as the guy who draws comics in the margins of Mad Magazine (or maybe the guy who did the little animated bits for Dick Clark's bloopers shows). His artistic "signatures" are crowd scenes like this...
...and his wordless pantomime comics, like his Mad Marginals. I could probably go on an on for quite a while about why I consider him a genius at cartooning, but honestly, if you don't already see why it's just going to be wasted breath. Instead, I'd rather talk about something I find nearly as fascinating as his work: a noticeable mid-career jump in skill.
That's not to say that he was unskilled, or even unheralded in his field. Sergio Aragones was first published at age 16, became a regular contributor to Mad Magazine in his mid-20's, and by his mid-30's was collecting awards for his work. Here's an example of his work from Plop (published in 1973, the same year he won the National Cartoonist Society's Humor Comic Book Award):
Nine years later, "Groo the Wanderer" finally saw print. At this point, Aragones' work is pretty similar. The crowd scenes and pantomimed action play a large role, and his drawing style is very similar to his work of the previous two decades. Here's a page from Starslayer #5, an early Groo appearance:
Let's fast-forward another eight years, the point at which I discovered "Groo" myself. This is the cover to issue #69, the issue that was on the newsstands when I first read "Groo."
Let's take a closer look at the artwork from this issue, another version of a "crowd scene":
But by this point (and it's hard to nail down an exact point), something has happened to the way Aragones is drawing characters. It's still recognizably his work, but let's compare two "pantomime" scenes (the first from 1982, the second from 1990):
The easiest comparisons are the way that Aragones draws the same character's nose or feet. Groo has gone from having flippers for feet to confident, cartoony feet. Let's get even more basic (first panel from 1982, the second from 1990):
I have to point out again, there's nothing wrong with the first example. It's the work of an award-winning cartoonist - a man working on a national level and receiving awards and praise for what he does. But one of the things I find fascinating about Sergio Aragones is that in his early-40's, there is a distinctive jump in his ability. After working professionally for nearly 25 years, something happened in his work that results in things like this (also from issue #69):
This is undeniably complex, brilliant cartooning that readers can lose themselves in if they so choose.
I learned a pretty odd lesson after continuing to read comics for a while: pretty much everything that I wanted to read (even as a teenager) was the product of someone who had been working consistently for a long time, and who had made a similar jump in their work. The kind of jump that comes only after literally decades of work, the kind of ability that comes hard-earned. There's a certain kind of thrill to seeing someone who has mastered their instrument, and it's a different kind of thrill than that of discovery. You can only discover an artist once, but the really great cartoonists can make you re-discover them from issue to issue.
"Groo the Wanderer" was a very popular book in it's day (and there are still new issues being published now), when the comics readership was much larger than it is now. The benefit of that is that it's very easy to find back issues at absurdly reasonable prices, so if you're at a convention and run across some copies of "Groo," the entertainment value far outstrips whatever you'd pay for them.
c.
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