(The Comics Journal #192 Interviews, December 1996 FIXME Broken link) Nineteen years now. A mutual friend introduced us way back and we've been good friends ever since. I've been doing the lettering on a lot of projects for him, including Groo and Magnor. In fact, I became a letterer because of Sergio. I was teaching calligraphy courses at one time and Sergio heard about it and said, "I'm starting a comic book, do you want to letter it?" I had never professionally lettered a comic book but I said sure, just for the opportunity to work with Sergio.

But fortunately, at that time, there was a magazine called Comic Scene; they were going through all the stages of producing a comic book and it so happened they were spotlighting lettering that month. It showed exactly how do to it -- the lettering guide, what size to make it, and everything -- so I just followed that and I became a letterer! In the first issue of Groo, or maybe the first two issues, you can see how the lettering changes every few pages, and that's because I was testing out new lettering pens and it wasn't until about the third or fourth issue that I found a pen that I liked. But even before I started lettering for Sergio he was recommending me to other people, and so I began doing lettering for comic strips. He would say, "Oh, what a great letterer Stan is!" and he'd never seen my lettering before then.

(WWW Board May 2000) That scene is in "The Kite Story" in UY Book 5

[and UY Vol 1, #20]

and was drawn by Sergio himself. I had shown him the art before sending it off to the publisher. When the comic came out right before the San Diego Con, people kept telling me how fun it was to see Groo in there. I didn't know what they were talking about until I went back and looked at the story.

(UY Vol 3, #1) Incidentally, that's Sergio on the cover of that issue

.

(WWW Board July 2000) Actually, I do the lettering on Sergio's books. His pencils are usually so loose that no one but Sergio can ink them. But to answer your question, it's great fun working with the Groop -- Sergio, Mark and Tom.

(The Comics Journal #192 Interviews, December 1996 FIXME Broken link) I received the Eisner Award for Best Letterer this year, but, for the longest time, I didn't consider myself a letterer. I was an artist or cartoonist who happened to do lettering. There was a meeting of letterers at one of the San Diego Cons. Todd Klein was there. So was Richard Starking and about ten others, myself included. It was fascinating. I had never been around so many letterers before. We talked about one's style, influences, and studying other letterers the way inkers talk about style or pencillers talk about influences. To me it was a revelation that letterers see themselves this way too. But then, it really is a craft and, though I letter comparitively few books a year, I really work at it. I've been lettering Groo ever since his second appearance. The first time I ever saw Groo was 1978. I belong to an organization called C.A.P.S., the Comic Art Professionals Society. In 1978 we did a C.A.P.S. portfolio, works by all the members, and Sergio's drawing was a picture with Groo in it -- four years before the official first publication. So, Sergio had been working on that character for a long time. He just inked a story for me

.

I had watercolored an eight-page story for the hardback edition of Usagi Yojimbo Book 4, called "Return to Adachigahara Plain". I still had the pencils for that, and because that particular book, in hardback, was completely sold out, not too many people actually got to see the story. I kind of tweaked the pencils a bit, because Usagi had changed over the years, and I asked Sergio to ink that for me; it'll appear in Usagi

#10. I had thought that he and I had pretty much similar styles of inking but after seeing his inks over my pencils I was surprised: "Wow, his inking is completely different from mine!" It's kinda neat.

Even my pencils have gotten looser. I think it's working with Sergio, because his pencils are incredibly loose.

But I had seen some really tight pencils that Sergio had done for Sergio Destroys Marvel and Sergio Destroys DC, and yeah, they were beautiful. His pencils were just gorgeous.

Some of the inkers were compatible with his style, others were not. John Byrne completely overwhelmed Sergio's pencils; others, like George Perez, complemented his work beautifully, which surprised me, frankly.

(Comic Culture Vol 2 #2 Interview, Dec 1994 FIXME Broken link) He loved it. Did you find the hidden message?

In the early issues of Groo, Mark Evanier or Sergio would put in hidden messages. One was, this was one of the early issues of the Epic series, if you take the first letter of every sound effect you get something like "Give Jack Kirby his artwork back," Or sometimes it would just be a hidden message. It was just a thing that we did, like an inside gag. But then fans caught on to it and it got to the point where we had to do a hidden message every issue. Mark just got tired of it and we stopped doing it around issue fifty or so. When I did Usagi eleven of the black and white series, with the Groo parody well, it wasn't a parody, it was more of a tribute . I also put in a hidden message. If you look at the poem, take the first letter of each line of the poem it will spell a hidden message. Also I did that because Sergio had the back up story in that issue, with his Catnippon series. That was a series that he was thinking about doing, but he's so busy that I find it amazing he even has time to do Groo.

(Comic Culture Vol 2 #2 Interview, Dec 1994 FIXME Broken link) Almost the entire creative team has been together since the Pacific days, that's Sergio, Mark Evanier, Tom Luth and myself. We get along well. We're all artists, everyone draws and is capable I think of doing each other's job. We each have an ongoing respect for each other's abilities, so it works out great. Most of all we're just friends.

(Comics Interview #44 Interviews, August 1987 FIXME Broken link) Okay, primarily it's Sergio's story. Sergio plots and draws it then gives it to Mark Evanier. Sergio acts out each issue of Groo in Mark's kitchen. Mark has a pretty big kitchen. He might say Groo does this, Groo does that -- I've seen Sergio do that in my house and he's great! He's running all over the place and he's just fun to watch!

Mark takes the pages from there and he erases all of Sergio's dialogue...(laughter) the reason for this is that Sergio writes the way he talks, with a very thick accent. Then Mark writes down his own interpretation of what Sergio meant to say and he gives it to me and I do the lettering and give it back to Sergio.

Sergio's pencils are incredible. A squiggle with a big nose is Groo. A squiggle without a big nose could be a huge army. (Laughter.) His pencils are outrageous. You've seen my pencils. My pencils are really tight. I'm always impressed that Sergio can actually make things out of those squiggles.

Anyway, Sergio finishes up the artwork and gives it back to Mark who does whatever Mark does, and from there it goes to Tom Luth and to Marvel.

(Amazing Heroes #187 Interview, January 1991 FIXME Broken link) (Laughs) Actually we're gaining ground. At one point, we were very close to deadline. When Groo left Pacific, there was a period of maybe six months before Epic picked it up. (Of course we did the special for Eclipse in that time) But during those six months we all just kept working on Groo because we knew that Groo was going to be picked up by another publisher. So the week after contracts were signed Sergio sent them one completed issue; then a week went by and Sergio sent them another completed issue, and another week went by and Sergio sent another completed issue. So they had three issues in house, and another week went by and.....nothing, so they sent us a note saying "Where's the next issue?"

But now, because of Sergio's schedule we've fallen a bit behind and are barely meeting deadlines, but we are catching up. Sergio does so many book signings. He's the only one I know who has gone to Europe for a weekend for a one-day appearance and flown back again. When we did a book signing together in Hawaii he just spent a day in Hawaii and flew back again. A lot of it is travel time, but he does take his pages wherever he goes. He's done Groo pages in Switzerland, Turkey, Tahiti; a lot of times he writes down the name of the city in the bottom right hand corner of the page so you have sort of a Groo travelogue. I think in one issue of Groo there was Heathrow, a couple of places in Ireland, Turkey, a couple towns in Yugoslavia, down in Mexico -- he's a world traveler all right.

Also, Mark (Evanier)'s really busy with his television work. He's head writer for Garfield and he's also writing a few other series. Sometimes he's a little behind schedule too. So it always falls to Tom and myself to try to get the work done as fast as we can.

(Amazing Heroes #187 Interview, January 1991 FIXME Broken link) Well, there's been times where I would have to turn over an issue in a day. I remember once when Sergio had just flown back from Europe and was going off to Mexico about four days later, and I was going on vacation to the Grand Canyon the next day. I had to drive over to his studio, pick up the pages, drive back home, do about half the issue that afternoon, mail it off to him and he got it right before he left for Mexico. But it's always fun. I enjoy working with Sergio, Mark and Groo -- Uh, Sergio, Mark and Tom, rather.

(Amazing Heroes #187 Interview, January 1991 FIXME Broken link) I don't know (laughs). I just keep working on Usagi...but then I rationalize it by thinking to myself that, well, if another project comes along then I can put Usagi aside for a couple months and work on something else, or if I want to take a month off I have that option. And actually, there have been a few other projects that have come up in the past few months, so I have not really worked on Usagi for about two months now -- but I think I'm still about four months ahead of schedule. I also did the Summer Special during that time, so that was done about four or five months ahead of deadline -- but a lot of that was because I wanted to give Tom as much time as I could to do the coloring.

Also, I came up from the ranks of advertising, where you always meet your deadlines. I have never missed a deadline in which it was my fault. I've always held deadlines to be absolute.

(Silver Bullet Comics Interview, November 2000 FIXME Broken link) Usagi has never "met" Sergio Aragonés' Groo, however there are references to the cheese-dip barbarian. Sergio is a good friend of mine and I had shown him pages of a story called "A Kite Story"

which follows a kite-maker as he spends a year preparing for and making an "odako" -- one of those huge 40 foot kites. Anyway, the story climaxes at a kite festival. When it was published, people came up to me and said they liked the in-joke of having Groo in the festival. I had no idea what they were talking about but sure enough, there he is. Sergio had drawn Groo in a crowd scene before returning the pages to me.

(WWW Board August 2000) As far back as I've known him -- about 20 years now -- Sergio has always had an interest in Japanese culture and history.

He came up with Catnippon about 1984 or so. I think there haves been two stories featuring his feline. One was a three or four pager that may be unpublished. The second appeared in one of the Usagi Yojimbo comics published by Fantagraphics.

We've wanted to collaborate on something for a long time. Groo was out because he intentionally does not cross-over with other creations.

We worked out a rough 6-issue story featuring our respective samurai creations while at a Detroit convention. But we've been so busy that we haven't done anything beyond that.

(The Comics Journal #192 Interviews, December 1996 FIXME Broken link) Sergio and I have been planning to do a mini-series together for the longest time, about the past five years or so. He has a character called Catnippon, of which he's done a couple of stories, one of which appeared in one of the Fantagraphics Usagi books (

#11). When we were in Detroit last year, we finally sat down and plotted out a six-issue story of Catnippon and Usagi; we're writing the series together, but it's a challenge, two creators working on the same book. First of all, finding time to do it, and then trying to figure out who does what, who does the pencils, who does the inking, do we switch over every other issue or every issue, every page, do I draw your characters, will you draw mine, or should I draw my own...? You know, that type of thing.

(Comic Culture Vol 2 #2, Dec 1994 FIXME Broken link) Well Groo has appeared in a few Usagi stories just as a background character. In fact, in the kite story I mentioned earlier that's one of the stories where I had shown Sergio the original artwork prior to publication. When I got it back, unknown to me he had drawn a picture of Groo in one of the panels. I started getting a couple of letters saying "Nice Groo you did." I didn't put Groo in there, and when I looked at it sure enough there was Groo. I didn't even know.

(UY Vol 1, #31) We're already working on an Usagi/Groo crossover. Aliens from space invade Usagi's world so he invents a time machine which takes him into the past where he learns that Groo is really his great-great-great-grandfather (there was a mixed marriage somewhere along the way) and Usagi's swords originally belonged to Groo, but one got shorter as time went on. The Sage, of course, devises a plan to defeat the aliens by trapping them in gooey cheese dip and covering them with mulch (the fertilizer not the dog). Everything works out in the end except that Rufferto mysteriously disappears, setting up the events for a Rufferto/Spot crossover.

Seriously, though, there are no plans for a Groo/Usagi meeting but Usagi may, one day, run into another of Sergio's creations, Catnippon.

If you can't wait that long, check out

#33, which will feature an Aragonés/Sakai collaboration . The plot was written by Sergio and is not what you'd expect from the creator of Groo or the MAD marginals.

(UY Vol 1, #24) Groo and Usagi will never meet. Groo hates sashimi and Usagi can't stand cheese dip.

(Comic Culture Vol 2 #2, Dec 1994 FIXME Broken link) He really does, and it's not just the drawing that I'm amazed at. It's the concepts. What he draws is not just a drawing of Groo standing there, it's a gag in that thirty seconds that he took to draw that picture he would do, he not only had to draw it physically but also to think of a great concept, a gag. Of course this is just for spontaneous sketches, when he works on Groo, he takes a lot longer. We've gotten letters where kids will say, "Gee Sergio, you must do an issue of Groo in two days, what do you do with the rest of the month?" (Laughter)

But Sergio does a lot of research. There are a few stories in which Groo would sail on ships, and each time Groo would sail on it the ship would sink, that was another ongoing gag. Sergio would research different ships or different periods or different countries and he would get to the point where everything he would draw would be accurate. So if you look at a ship in the Groo stories, you could actually build it and you could actually be able to sail it. He's probably my inspiration for being such a cultural fanatic, trying to get everything right. He's just a nut for authenticity. He kind of pushed that on me, too. In the early issues of Usagi I'd show it to him and he'd say, "Oh well, this fishing boat is wrong, that's not how they actually built it," things like that. He also loves the Japanese culture and he knows a lot about that, too, so he's the one who pushed me to getting everything right, or as authentic as possible.

(The Comics Journal #192 Interviews, December 1996 FIXME Broken link) Yeah. My penciling has become a lot more non-existent since I began working with Sergio. I remember when I did the Usagi story for Critters #1, I was proud that I did that eight-page story in just one month. Now I can do a 24-page story in a month.

(UY Vol 3, #43) The "travelogue FIXME Old Dojo - needs conversion" was a two-page feature in last summer's Dark Horse Maverick 2000. It described my trip to Norway with Sergio Aragonés. Among the highlights was a dinner of turnips and boiled sheep's head (Sergio got the tongue).