Here's my latest in a series of photo-ops with a big-named personality. This time, it's famed MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés, teamed up with me at a comic book convention in NYC (Circa the 1980s). At the time, Sergio was having success with his independent comic book title "Groo the Wanderer" (which has been published by several different companies over the years - Dark Horse, being the latest one). He would autograph this photo as a later convention (as you can tell by the large 'S' below his chest.)

Besides having my beard and mustache back then, I began wearing caps with pins of various anthropomorphic characters to these comic book cons. Among the ones I began to wear were pins of 'Erma Felna' (a female feline space commander from Steve Gallacci's "Albedo"), 'Stinz' (a half-horse/half-human Amish creation of Donna Barr), 'Tan' (the otter/maintenance crew member in "Fusion" - drawn by Gallacci and Lela A. Dowling), and the title characters of "The Weasel Patrol" (also drawn by Dowling). Perhaps some of you might've seen me at past comic book and/or furry cons, wearing this metal-topped garment...

I would meet Sergio at several comic book cons on the East Coast during the 1980s and 1990s. (Most of them were in NYC, but I did meet him once at a convention in Orlando, FL in the mid-1990s. Of course, by then his hair and mustache became grayer than my beard - which I'd since shaved off, along with my mustache, to make me look younger.)

As for an anthropomorphic connection, Sergio's comic stories usually had lettering done by artist Stan Sakai of "Usagi Yojimbo" fame. In fact, in two issues of "UY", Sergio illustrated a back-up story with a martial arts character of his own, 'Cat Nippon'! (At one of the last conventions we'd met, Sergio was kind enough to draw 'Cat Nippon' in my giant black sketch book of anthroart!)

He is still hard at work to this very day, creating new columns (as well as his usual 'marginal drawings') for MAD Magazine, and hopefully coming up with all-new adventures for "Groo the Wanderer". Here's hoping that our paths will cross again, in the not-too-distant future!