Sergio Aragonés

Sergio Aragonés Domenech [born September 6, 1937, Sant Mateu, Castellón, Spain] is a cartoonist and writer best known for his contributions to Mad Magazine and creator of the comic book Groo the Wanderer.

Among his peers and fans, Aragonés is widely regarded as "the world's fastest cartoonist."The Comics Journal has described Aragonés as "one of the most prolific and brilliant cartoonists of his generation."Mad editor Al Feldstein said, "He could have drawn the whole magazine if we'd let him."

Born in Spain, Aragonés emigrated with his family to France, due to the Spanish Civil War, before settling in Mexico at age 6. Aragonés had a passion for art since early childhood. As one anecdote goes, Aragonés was once left alone in a room by his parents with a box of crayons. His parents returned sometime later to find that he had covered the wall in hundreds upon hundreds of drawings. Aragonés recalled his early difficulties in Mexico, saying, "I didn't have too many friends because I had just arrived. You're the new kid, and you have an accent. I've always had an accent... When the other kids make fun of you, you don't want to get out of the house. So you stay at home, and what do you do? You take pencils and start drawing."

Aragonés used his drawing skill to assimilate. "The earliest money I ever made was with drawings," he remembered. "The teacher would give us homework, which would consist of copying Chapter Eleven, including the illustrations... a beetle or a plant, the pistil of a flower, or soldiers-- that type of thing. All the kids who couldn't draw would leave a square where the drawing was, and I would charge them to draw that. The equivalent of a few pennies... That's probably why I draw so fast, because I drew so many of them."

He made his first professional sale in 1954 when a high school classmate submitted his work to a magazine without telling Aragonés. He continued to sell gag cartoons to magazines while studying architecture at the University of Mexico, where he also learned pantomime under the direction of Alejandro Jodorowsky. “I joined the class,” Aragonés recalled, “not to become a mime but to apply its physical aspects of movement to my comics.” In 1962, Aragonés moved to the United States. He currently resides and works in Ojai, California.

source: wikipedia