Sergio Aragonés

Sergio Aragonés is an American cartoonist, originally born in Spain and raised in Mexico, best known for two things: his prolific contributions to Mad Magazine; and the comic book Groo the Wanderer, which he created, draws, and co-writes with Mark Evanier.

Many have claimed that Sergio is the fastest cartoonist in the world today, a skill he demonstrates with sketches at his live appearances. He has been honored with every major award in the field of comic-book art, including the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award and the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.

Works Sergio has contributed to with their own trope pages include:

Groo the Wanderer: Creator, co-writer, artist.
Mad Magazine: Prolific contributing cartoonist, best known for "A MAD Look at..." and "Drawn-Out Dramas"
TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes: Sergio created an Animated Credits Opening sequence for the show involving backstage workers, an elephant and a marching band; as well as bumpers and transition scenes involving the workers.
Weekly World News: For a short time he drew a "How many X can you spot in this picture?" type of feature for them.
Bart Simpson Comics by Bongo Comics.
Sergio Aragonés Funnies, also published by Bongo. Gags and autobiographical stories.
Usagi Yojimbo: Sergio contributed a story idea once and inked a (different) story once for this otherwise solo comic by Groo letterer Stan Sakai.

Sergio Aragonés provides examples of the following tropes:

Author Avatar: Often appears as himself doing the introductions to his comic book work, and sometimes together with his collaborators as well (e.g. Groo's co-writer Mark Evanier, letterer Stan Sakai, and colorist Tom Luth).
Badass Moustache
Bloodless Carnage
Cast of Snowflakes: Varies by work. In crowd scenes, Sergio makes every effort to give everyone a unique appearance (which is very hard with his art style), although in his shorts you see characters reused very often.
Cool Old Guy: Very much so.
Funny Background Event: Most easily seen in his "Drawn Out Dramas" in the margins of Mad magazine, but also appears frequently in crowd shots.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: Sergio likes to sneak penises and bare-breasted women into some of his background scenes, particularly Groo the Wanderer. Given the cartoonish style of his work, it's more comedic than titillating.
Just a Stupid Accent: Whenever Sergio addresses readers in his comics (see Obfuscating Stupidity, below).
No Dialogue Episode: His "A Mad Look At..." segments for Mad almost never use dialogue.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Whenever Sergio addresses the reader in his comics, he "speaks" with a heavily-accented pidgin English, even though he's fluently multilingual in Real Life. Unfortunately, sometimes he gets booked for events by people who think he really doesn't speak English... and hire a translator as a result. Sergio ends up feigning his non-English to avoid embarrassing his hosts.
Signature Style
Silence Is Golden: Sergio is a master of this, especially evident by his works in Mad Magazine.
- Parodied in one of MAD's anniversary issues, when they claimed that he wrote an entire treastise on nuclear weaponry that was their all-time most wordy article. They further claimed that he stopped when he discovered that they did not pay by the word.
- Also parodied when they issued a "correction" revealing that, by accident, the speech bubbles had been omitted from his comics for the past several decades and that they hoped to fix the problem soon.
Write Who You Know: Sergio's dog Rufferto inspired Groo's dog of the same name, and is drawn identically in Author Avatar or autobiographical sequences from Groo and other books. A few other Groo characters are modeled after real people: Action Girl Chakaal is based on Sergio's wife Charlene, and Weaver and Scribe are based on Mark Evanier and Stan Sakai.