By Sergio Aragones
Publisher: Running Press
ISBN: 978-0-7624-3687-3
There are few cartoonists that turn out cartoons at the speed, quality and frequency of Sergio Aragones. He draws pretty much all day every day, turning wherever he is into his studio.
With such an impressive history of funnies behind him this large hardback book barely scratches the surface of his output, but what it does achieve is a cartoon history of his work from his arrival at Mad in the 1960s to the present day.
The vast majority of his work is what he terms as pantomime, where the gags are played out without the use of words. This technique can draw you deeper into the cartoon as, occasionally, a first read doesn’t always reveal the joke as the punchline is delivered through some clever detail back in the first panel.
He uses this approach in MAD to create the vastly contrasting double-page, highly detailed scenes (Woodstock and the Superbowl are two examples featured in the book) and the tiny cartoons that sit within the margins. It’s these latter MAD marginals that he is mostly associated with, creating 50 years of these micro-gag cartoons to slot into narrow columns and bend around the page’s gutter.
The book’s divided up into decades, with new art by Sergio introducing each section. There’s also an interview with the great man at the beginning of the book, carried out by former MAD Editor Nick Meglin, suggesting that despite all of Sergio’s success he’s a down-to-Earth, thoroughly nice guy.
Most pages are dedicated to his “MAD Look At…” cartoons that take a specific topic, be it King Kong, Racism or Mobile Phones, to create a multitude of wordless gags around the theme. Throughout their history these have largely been black and white, but once you hit the 2000s section the MAD editorial team played around with colour washes, spot colour and some nasty Photoshop frames which are nothing but a distraction, finally settling on some subtle full colour embellishments that do them justice.
It’s a small shame that the production team that put together this book didn’t take a little more care – one particular marginal is repeated over several pages, while on another page one is set on top of another cartoon making both unreadable – but that’s just a minor gripe when the rest of the book is such a pleasure. Get your copy and enjoy!
And if you liked that: If you’ve never read Sergio Aragones’ Groo then now’s the time to pick up a collection!
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