Every year for the past few years Jack Davis hosts the "Jack Davis Lecture Series" at his Alma Marta the University of Georgia in Athens, where he honors an artist/cartoonist. Last years recipient of the "Bronze Shoe" award was Atlanta Journal Constitution's cartoonist Mike Luckovich. The award itself looks just like one of Jack Davis's exaggerated boots and according to this year's recipient is pretty heavy. Sergio Aragones has won every major award there is, although he was genuinely touched to receive this from his esteemed colleague at MAD magazine.
I was extremely fortunate to have been able to attend this function and the activities that took place leading up to the event. The day started off with myself and my friend, caricaturist Wade Collins driving about an hr and a half to Athens. After arriving at what we thought was the correct building we promptly realised that we were in fact in the wrong section of the campus. 15 minutes later we arrived at the "Draw done" where members of the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society (who meet regularly at our favorite Mellow Mushroom Pizza place and who were involved in the Southern Fried Comics project - see earlier post) and other cartoonists, including Sergio were facing off drawing UGA students. It was a wonderful sight to see students drawing Sergio and he them, in as realistic a style as he could. Wade immediately jumped right in and took his place drawing feverishly. I took the opportunity to mingle and finally met Stay Tooned editor John Reed, who had the foresight to bring a good camera to take the pics you see above (more in a future post on his great publication). During a slow period I also got to hang out with Sergio for a good 15 mins during which time we discussed everything from the current state of MAD magazine, to publishing in general to his own ideas about future projects. I have heard many a person talk about Sergio's approachability and how down to earth he is and every word of it is 100% true. He was unassuming and genuinely interested in differing opinions and other people's work.
After the session ended we all went to lunch together in the Student Union building and then Wade and I drove around town while the rest of the crowd went back to their hotel rooms to rest before the festivities that night. The lecture started at 7pm with Jack Davis presenting Sergio with the Bronze Shoe award and then Sergio talked about his career, how he started drawing cartoons for his classmates in high school and how that led to him selling cartoons locally in Mexico and how he ended up at MAD magazine. Over the last 30 years he has been very active in the comics industry with projects such as PLOP!/GROO/Louder Than Words etc... As a matter of fact one of the GROO trade paperbacks was just about to be released and he was excited about that.
The highlight of the evening was without a doubt watching him draw with the aid of a projector we could all see the amazing speed for which he is so known for. And he was truly incredible. He'd ask the audience for a gag premise and then BOOM! he was off drawing a million miles an hr! WOW - we were all cheering and laughing. It was amazing. When the event was over Jack and Sergio signed whatever people had brought for them to autograph. A bunch more cartoonist and artists that I knew were all there and it was a great kind of reunion. About 30 people were invited to eat at Jack's restaurant in Athens, although unfortunately Wade and I had to bid everyone farewell as we both had prior commitments. We drove back home relishing the great time we had that day and the wonderful memories of meeting another legendary cartoonist.
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