MAD's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragones: Five Decades of His Finest Works Hardcover – October 5, 2010

When my wife and I first got married, we made it a point to go out to a 'special' dinner, once a month.We would pick up a copy of the latest Mad Magazine, bring it to the restaurant, and order the meal. Then, while waiting for the food to arrive, we would look ONLY at the wordless cartoons by Sergio. My wife is Chinese, and was fairly new to English, so she wouldn't be able to understand the text-based humor. But Sergio's masterpieces, as you know, didn't usually require a handle on English.We did that for the first few years of marriage, and always laughed hard. That was about 15 years ago.So it was a very pleasant surprise, to see that Amazon was selling a collection book of cartoons, from this comedic genius. I received the book yesterday, and today we cuddled in bed, and looked through some of the cartoons, picking pages at random. Our capacity for intense laughter has not changed.It will probably take us 3-6 months to finish this, because we want it to last, we don't want to overexpose the funny bone.Universal. You can share this with teenagers, with foreign friends or relatives. You can stop by your friend's desk, out of the blue, and say 'Hey, take a look at this one'. Gets a laugh, every time.Thanks for choosing cartooning as a profession, Sergio. Live long, don't stop.

Sergio Aragones is one of my heroes. I grew up enjoying his work and still do. He is one of the most gifted and natural cartoonists of all time and his gags are consistently fresh and funny. My complaint with this book has nothing to do with Aragones and everything to do with modern reproduction. The spreads are all scanned in grayscale (though printed via four-color process) and as a result are somewhat muddy. Aragones's beautiful sharpness of line is replaced by the soft-edged quality of most of these collections of late (same went for the two-volume Don Martin collection). Curiously, the "marginals" that augment many of the pages are line scans and look better than the full-page spreads. I still recommend this book, as it's likely the only collection we fans will get. And bear in mind that I am approaching this as a cartoonist, myself. Most people wouldn't even notice or care, satisfied as they should be by the genius of Aragones's work.

MAD Magazine has captured the American condition for decades, and no one has been able to make me laugh more than Sergio Aragones.His brilliance is in storytelling through art. No words Needed.There are many comic strips out there, but Sergio has created his own brand of cartoon humor that transcends generations. His humor is as funny now as it was when the art was originally published.This book offers A LOT of work by Aragones. Yes, I would have loved more because I love it so much, but the 200+ pages offer a fair amount of content.I'm happy to have found this book and I'll always go back to it for humor you have to think about in order to get.And that's the beauty of Sergio Aragones' art: it gets you INVOLVED with the drawings rather than passively reading them. You have to THINK to enjoy the jokes. That's brilliant.Get it now!

Sergio Aragones is the single most creative cartoonist alive -- primarily in his ability to convey without any words an energy or emotion. I imagine that he has world-wide appeal because you don't need to speak English to "get" 95% of his work. My favorite feature is "A MAD Look At...." and there's plenty of that here. But I would love to see a companion book that is 100% "A MAD Look At..." with every single one Sergio has done. I would also like to see an entire book of "MAD Marginals" in large size to accommodate my vision. But until those two books are written, this is the book to get -- and at almost 300 pages, there is no shortage of genius inside.

I love Sergio Aragones' cartoons. I grew up reading Mad in the 60s and squinting to see his little doodles in the margin. When I heard about this book, I thought "Great! Finally his marginal cartoons will be printed big enough to really appreciate!" No such luck. The marginal cartoons are maginal to this book. Most of it consists of double page features printed directly out of Mad. And not printed very well. The original magazine looks much more crisp than this. The marginal gags are printed EVEN SMALLER than they were in the magazine, crammed onto an unreadable pullout at the back of the book. Also, the book is arranged chronologically by decade, with the same number of pages for each decade. This means that the spectacular work Aragones did in the 60s is just a short section at the beginning, and we get a huge pile of stuff from after Mad jumped the shark.This book makes me feel bad when I look at it, because I know what it could have been. It shouldn't be like that with such a joyful and exuberant cartoonists like Sergio.

I really enjoy Sergio Aragones' work. He is a delightful artist and each little cartoon must be read, rather than "looked at."The problem with "MAD's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragones: Five Decades of His Finest Work" is that there really isn't enough of his work reproduced. We should be reading hundreds of marginals in this collection, along with more relevant silent comics.There seems to be an over-emphasis on his more recent work. I would have liked to see more from the '60s and '70s. A great feature in the past was "The Shadow Knows..." in which Aragones drew emotions in the shadows of people. To me, those were much more creative than the Star Wars jokes that they reprint in this book.The poster that includes tons of marginals actually cuts off a lot of them. That's pretty disappointing. Some of the two-page spreads are great, like the huge maps or schoolyard scenes.If you're an Argones fan or are just looking for some great gags, this is a nice book. I just wish it had a little more of his early work and a lot more of his marginals.

This is a MAD book. Containing 50+ years of gags & cartoons of the hand of Master Artist Sergio Aragones. Foreword is by Patrick McDonnell of "Mutts". I am a big fan of Sergio since I read MAD magazine in the 80's, and have fond memories of the little squirly drawings everywhere in MAD (the Marginals) and of course in the "A MAD look on .." articles. The drawings are indeed brilliant, cartoonesk but so accurate and effective. He really doesn't need words to tell the little stories. The humor is smart and sweet, never nasty.IMHO it is a book you can open at any point and enjoy. Last but not least this is a BIG book, beautiful crafted.

Can somebody explain, why this magazine did't use the nice full page mat quality?Instead they have copied original cartoons to a shinny - read cheap - finish.

I'm a little late to the party and as of the time of this writing is sold out everywhere so picked up a used copy for under $100 which is the best price I could find it at. The book is beyond expectations and worth every penny though, it'll will be greatly treasured.

MADs große Meister: Sergio AragonésDer Titel sagt eigentlich alles. Eine der besten Zeichner in Mad ist Sergio Aragonés. Wer kennt sie nicht, die kleinen Zeichnungen am Rande der Seiten, die ohne Worte auskommen, oder die Rubrik 'A Mad Look At...'. Sie sind Klassiker im vernünftigsten Altpapier der Welt.50 Jahrzehnte des Schaffens von Sergio Aragonés sind in diesem Band enthalten, und das auf über 250 Seiten. Ein Großteil der Zeichnungen sind schwarzweiß, aber es gibt auch einige farbige Seiten. Sehr interessant ist dabei der zeitgeschichtliche Ansatz. Während in den 60ern noch regelmäßig Hippies und Beatniks die Cartoons zieren, sind bei den Zeichnungen aus dem letzten Jahrzehnt schon Handys und übertriebene Flughafensicherheit Thema. Wie z.B. in seiner Serie GROO ist Sergio Aragonés bei all seiner Witzelei auch sozialkritisch. So werden auch Themen wie Rassismus oder mexikanische Illegale aufgegriffen.Fazit: Ein gut ausgewählter Band vom schnellsten Cartoonisten der Welt!

True to its title, this is a collection of Sergio's artwork from MAD magazine, ranging from the '60s to the current day. In addition, there are marginals scattered throughout on every page, a detail I very much enjoyed. It is wonderfully oversized, and printed on good quality heavy paper.Most of the stuff from the '60s and '70s has been published in book format before (such as in "MAD's Sergio Aragones on Parade"), but not on such good quality paper as the current offering. The former title is also long out of print.Included are some MAD articles where Sergio was not the writer and merely did the artwork. These I did not enjoy as much as the pieces which were 100% Sergio, but thankfully the former are in the minority. There are also reprints of some covers Sergio did, including the cover of the awesome MAD MANIA Super Special (Spring 1988).If I had one complaint it would be to do with the editing of the marginals which appear on each page. It would have been nice if there were era-appropriate marginals in each section (ie, marginals Sergio wrote in the '60s appearing in the '60s section). An especially glaring example (to my eye) is in the '60s section there is a marginal showing a man rushing past his wife to check his computer email! But perhaps this is more a matter of personal taste. On a more egregious note, one marginal appears twice (p.37 and p.50), and another appears three times (p.110, p.123, p.136)! Two other marginals were also erroneously duplicated, but in this case they were actually printed on one of Sergio's pieces, obstructing the artwork (p.146, upper left panel).Overall though, that is a very minor complaint. This is a fantastic book and very easily worth the price.