On the 9th day of June, 1937, during the
Spanish Civil War, Sergio Aragones was born in
Castellon. The
political situation being what it was, Sergio's family quickly
packed up and
moved away; first to
France, six months after Sergio was born, and then a few years later to
Mexico City.
In the third grade, Sergio discovered that
money could be made from his art when classmates started to pay him to draw their
homework assignments. He continuted to draw solely for himself and his friends until he turned 17, when his friends sent some of his comics to
Ja Ja, a local
humor magazine.
Aragones attended the University of Mexico, ostensibly to study architecture, but instead found his time being occupied with his hobbies: drawing cartoons, acting with the theater group, doing pantomime, and even performing as a clown in an aquatic ballet troupe. He continued to sell and publish his artwork through various outlets, even managing to contribue to Mañana Magazine every week for ten years.
In 1962, having only $20 and his portfolio, Aragones struck out for New York City. Sergio survived there for a few months by reciting poetry in Greenwich Village, but quickly realized he needed to make a better living. Heeding (or perhaps ignoring) the advice of a friend who told him to start at the top, Sergio headed for the offices of MAD Magazine, and was quickly accepted into The Usual Gang Of Idiots.
While still working for MAD, Sergio did some work for DC, drawing for nearly every issue of the horror comic Plop!. He also did some animation, desgining scenes for Laugh-In and TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes.
Sergio created (or at the very least, revolutionized and made his permanent mark on) MAD's regular feature, "A MAD Look At..", featuring his take on various subjects. He even created a brilliant parody of this in one issue, taking the "MAD's Sergio Aragones Looks At.." literally and publishing a page of photographs of the mustachioed cartoonist wandering through a used car lot and inspecting the merchandise. He also created "Marginals", small doodles in the margins of various pages in the magazine.
In 1982, Marvel's Epic subsidary started publishing Sergio's self-created comic, 'Groo The Wanderer', which is possibly his most famous work after MAD. He later published several other books, such as "Boogeyman", another horror comic, and "Louder Than Words", both through Dark Horse.
Sergio's art is quite noticable. His years performing pantomime have taught him how to get his meaning across using only pictures; most of his work for MAD is text-free. Even in issues of Groo (who talks), there are silent comics starring the Wanderer's dog, Rufferto. He has even used his art to help teach English as a Second Language, putting out books of silent comics that students can interpret to help develop their English.
Aragones is one of the hardest working people in the comics business, with work appearing monthly in MAD, in every copy of Paradox Press' "The Big Book Of...", various publications for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and many other places. He travels to many cons, and will sit around for hours chatting with and sketching for his fans. He's been called one of the fastest sketchers in the business, and will turn out a very impressive original sketch in a very short time. Even while attending cons, he is still at work; he has been spotted in the audience of awards shows still working on comics pages, and some of his work in Groo has a note describing where and when it was drawn.
Sergio is a staunch supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; occasionally, in return for a sketch, he will ask that the recipient make a donation to the fund. He has been described, and rightly so, as a perfect gentleman, and is rarely seen without a smile below his trademark handlebar mustache. He claims to enjoy building model ships and furniture, and to drink "too much coffee".
Sources:
http://www.focusonthemasters.com/ag/aragones.html
http://www.lambiek.net/aragones.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/9756/aragones.html
http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Field/8461/sergio.htm
http://www.cartoon.org/aragones.htm
http://www.jagpublications-esl.com/comics.htm is about the ESL books described above
http://www.lib.msu.edu/comics/rhode/wordless.htm has some information about Sergio's silent work
and i could SWEAR there used to be a bio at http://www.groo.com but i can't find one, or proof that one existed.