[Groop] Tone's Baltimore Comic Con report - #3

[Tone]

	Okay, so I left off last time at being seated at Sergio's panel.
Some people, who attended the convention, have already shared a few
things heard at Sergio's panel. I will try not to be too repetitive, but
will also attempt to fill in some of the gaps.

	When Sergio sat down he made some joke about sitting at one
table for hours on end just to rush to another to sit down at. There
were a number of cups of water set out on the table and there were a
couple of seats, but obviously Sergio was the only one at the front of
the room. Once again he made some joke about wondering how the
convention workers knew he would be so thirsty after coming all the way
upstairs even though he used the escalators.
	I forget how he got started afterward in his spotlight panel,
but I suppose his development experiences are as good as any for right
now. No matter what he spoke of Sergio was quite upbeat and rather
animated in his expressions and gestures. I kept trying to photograph
him, but due to the room's lighting and Sergio's frequent movement most
of my shots were blurry. Here is one of the better ones:

http://www.moon-shine.net/groo/Baltimore-PanelClose.jpg


	Anyway, Sergio spoke of the background of his parents coming
from Spain during the civil war there and being raised in Mexico. He had
been doodling before he even talked. He drew shapes and stuff from the
beginning. His father did not like him doing cartoons and made him go to
school for architecture. He did study architecture, but he kept drawing
anyway. College was an amazing experience for him because it exposed him
to so many concepts and worldly knowledge. Other interesting,
intellectual, and driven students he met there shared hopes & ideas,
which just spurred him on in his own dreams. He admitted that along with
those he met in college other driven people, who he has encountered
during his life, are what probably inspired him most. Although I also
recall him saying his uncle encouraged him a great deal as well.
	After college he left Mexico to go to New York City with a bunch
of his cartoon drawings and whatever cash he had in his pocket. While
making rounds to various companies to try to get his art in print or
land some sort of cartoon job, he did mention what job he worked at, but
I can not recall it at the moment. :( I remember it being pretty
interesting though.

	In any case while going around to the various companies people
kept suggesting he present his art to MAD. He was certainly familiar
with MAD Magazine, but he had always thought they were primarily
interested in multi-page paneled artwork, but Sergio's style involved
individual cartoon scenes. Eventually though he got the message and
decided to give MAD a try.
	Sergio's English was not that good then, so when he walked into
the MAD offices and the receptionist asked what he was there for, he
could only come up with the Cuban artist at MAD, who illustrated the Spy
vs. Spy strips. He figured since he knew that Antonio Prohías spoke
Spanish he could communicate with and through him. Well, Antonio was
immediately very welcoming to Sergio because Sergio was a fellow
Spanish-speaking artist. The problem was Antonio's English was no better
than Sergio's, but Antonio was still willing to introduce Sergio to
people around the MAD offices. Antonio also referred to Sergio as a
brother in the manner traditional among Hispanics, but this was actually
lost in translation a bit. Therefore the people Sergio was introduced to
mistakenly took Sergio more seriously as Antonio's actual brother.
	Regardless Sergio was able to present his portfolio to the right
people in MAD and they loved his artwork. The problem in Sergio's mind
was just that they could not use it due to MAD's format. However, they
asked Sergio if he could compile a bunch of his cartoons according to
subject matter, so they could print them as a related collection on a
two page spread, which Sergio admittedly had never even thought of.
	When he saw the guys at MAD it was on a Friday, and apparently
by Monday (or Tuesday due to a long holiday weekend I think I remember
Sergio mentioning) Sergio returned with something like 30 drawings on
the Astronaut or Space program subject matter the MAD people had
requested of him. The dudes at MAD were in shock because no one had ever
returned to them with so much stuff so fast. They gladly bought a bunch
of the artwork at $50 a page, which was their standard going rate for
purchasing artist work back then.
	They also requested Sergio create more artwork on other subject
matters, such as football or something to that effect. Well, Sergio
returned before the end of the week with what they had asked and
surprised them yet again. Within a couple of weeks Sergio was
contributing all sorts of stuff, including what MAD was asking for and
other stuff he did for himself on the side. This quickly led to Sergio
becoming the highest paid artist at MAD simply due to the volume of his
contributions.

	Sergio also shared with us the story of how he got to know Mark
so well. I forget exactly how Sergio explained his first meeting with
Mark, but Mark was only seventeen years old at the time and definitely a
fan of Sergio's. Apparently Sergio was at some event where Mark was in
attendance to see him, but due to meeting so many people Sergio did not
remember him.
	Later on however, Sergio was invited to attend a local club's
meeting as a guest speaker. I forget exactly if it was specified as a
comic book association of some sort. Either way their meeting was to be
held at a library within walking distance from where Sergio lived in
Santa Monica(?) at the time.
	When Sergio arrived at the library he was directed to some
little room, perhaps even in the basement. It turned out there were only
three people there. I seem to remember Sergio saying all of them were
teenagers, and one of them was Mark. Naturally, being the gracious
gentleman Sergio is, he stuck around and had a good discussion with the
lot of them and got to know Mark pretty well then. I seem to recall
Sergio mentioning how he went out for coffee or drinks afterward with
Mark, but I can not remember if it was right after or some other time.
However it transpired later on, that is the story of how Mark and Sergio
met, and they have been friends ever since.
	It was not too long after speaking of Mark that Mark actually
called Sergio on his cell phone. I believe someone else in the Groop
already spoke about how Mark called in the middle of Sergio's panel.
After whispering sweet things into each other's ears, Sergio offered up
Mark for questioning to the audience through his cell phone. Apparently
the only question on everyone's mind was why he was not there and Mark
quickly responded he was simply not invited. After his reply, that was
it. There were no more questions. Apparently Sergio had covered quite a
bit about Mark by then enough to satisfy everyone in the room I guess.

	In terms of creating and developing Groo... well that is
somewhat explained in the Groo Anniversary Special, so everyone should
buy one if they have not done so already. Basically, Sergio had created
Groo long before the first story or comic came out in print. It took (I
think he said) about ten years before Groo made it to publication
because Sergio did not want to give away the rights to his creation.
Eventually though, there was the Destroyer Duck Eclipse, where the first
story appeared. Following that Pacific offered to go 50/50 in printing a
Groo comic book series. Later on Pacific went under, but as we all know
Groo managed to be picked up by Epic, which was an off-shoot of Marvel.
	Speaking of waiting years for a break, Sergio spoke of the Groo
movie. For a while Sergio and Mark had bounced the idea around of
getting a movie made. However the little problem of keeping the rights
to Groo or at least some level of artistic control kept creeping up. A
couple of studios were interested, but none of their offers appealed to
them. As mentioned a while ago amongst the Groop, one company envisioned
it as a live action flick with some comedian as Groo, which definitely
did not appeal to Sergio or Mark. They had already decided it would be
CG (or 3-D computer graphics).
	While Sergio loves the idea of picturing a hand-drawn
illustrated Groo movie, he certainly does not love the idea of
hand-drawing so many individual frames, and was pretty sure Tom Luth
would despise him for even being asked to color any of them. Besides,
Sergio said, these days if you look at films like Lord of the Rings and
such, with the great CG capabilities out there the battle scenes could
be so immensely detailed and animated... and he really would not have to
draw each little guy hacking and slashing in the background. Meanwhile
the plastic cartoon feel would be kept intact.
	According to Sergio apparently the rights for the Groo movie
have been sold to a slightly smaller studio than the ones they had
originally been approached by. However from what he was trying to
explain, I got the impression the contract details have not been
completely signed off. That is due to some artistic disagreements.
Sergio mentioned something about "having the final say" in things, but I
was not sure if he meant Sergio and Mark wanted the final say in
decisions or if her personally did not need the very last say in things
but still wanted a to be a major decision maker. Perhaps Mark could
elaborate or at least fine comb my recollection of things.
	Regardless at the moment what this all means is the movie deal
is on hold, but once again Sergio is patient in seeing his creation
waiting to hit the big screen. After all, he waited about ten years to
see his creation come to print, so he can wait another ten or twenty
before it hits theaters. His only concern is in ten or twenty years he
might become a bit old and cranky, which may result in him finally
getting impatient and just agreeing with everything just to get it over
with. :)

	Speaking of Sergio's age, when he spoke of waiting for the movie
he also brought up some other artist in the industry, who I believe is
around 80 years old. Could it have been the artist involved with the
"Spirit" series? I apologize, but I do not particularly recall much of
the Spirit related discussion Sergio spoke of. Being primarily a fan of
Sergio's due to Groo and some of his MAD days from the 1980s, I was
quite unfamiliar with "Spirit," so I did not follow or mentally keep
track of what was said of that project all that well.
	In any case, when Sergio mentioned 80 as an age, he also brought
up his own birthday. Smiling like a little boy, he smoothly slipped in
the fact that his birthday was just "Yesterday." Everyone naturally
wished Sergio a happy birthday. However, I noticed one or two people in
the room looking around with a questioning look on their faces,
including myself. The panel was on Saturday the 8th, but as far as I
know Sergio's birthday is on September 6th. That would mean either
Sergio was just trying to simplify dates, or he possibly just got his
dates mixed up with all his traveling around. It did not really matter
of course. Everybody was just happy of course, and Sergio also told
everyone he had just turned 70 years of age, which the audience doubly
congratulated him on.

	Just a bit earlier I spoke of Sergio's talk about the Groo
movie, which got me thinking about some related subject matter Sergio
discussed. During the Q&A session someone asked Sergio about his
participation in the TV series "TVs Bloopers & Practical Jokes." I do
not remember exactly how the questioning was worded or answered exactly,
but as a follow up someone did ask why Sergio depicted himself as a
janitor in the animation for the show. For the show Sergio was to make
transitional scenes between segments and/or the commercials. Within the
industry these are referred to as "wipes," so Sergio simply developed
and animated a bunch of little cleaning men to sweep from one segment to
another. The choice of himself as the faces for the little cleaning men
was not a major decision. He just happens to know his own face well
because of mirrors.
	Depicting himself in his doodling has occasionally been done by
accident or by habit over the years. In fact he brought up an amusing
anecdote to explain this further. Apparently Sergio's father (maybe
uncle or perhaps another family member if I am mistaken) works in the
film industry in Mexico.
-
Briefly going back to the subject of the Groo movie... this is one of
the reasons Sergio is familiar with the practices of and knows how to
deal with production companies to get a fair deal for the Groo movie.
That and of course Mark has worked within the TV industry for years.
-
	Anyway, at some point there was a production Sergio's "father"
or perhaps an associate was involved with, and Sergio was asked to work
on or assist with the script. Well, being himself, Sergio ended up
drawing up storyboards rather than scripts. This was natural to Sergio
because he could actually draw them faster than writing out a script.
One of the characters was a bad-guy general, and the evil mustached
villain in those cliché silent movies was reminiscent to Sergio. In
Sergio's mind that mustached villain always reminded him of his own
appearance, so he simply depicted the bad general as himself. This is
turn resulted in the movie's production company presuming Sergio has
cast himself as the general, but he went along with them because he
thought they were joking. Eventually he had to correct them though when
the costume tailor came to take his measurements.

	It seems that when I retell Sergio's panel discussion, certain
things I bring up remind me of more things Sergio spoke of. Well, this
time instead of the Groo movie reminding me of the Bloopers shoe, it is
the animation in the Bloopers show reminding me of Sergio's experience
with animation.
	Back in the day when Sergio was (I got the impression) either in
college or slightly before college he pretty much understood everything
there was about creating animation due to his "father's" involvement in
the movie industry. Around that time there was a point where Sergio
considered doing his own animated short. Of course he had done a number
of flip books in the margins of various books when he was younger, but
shooting his own animation onto film was another thing. By the way,
doing flip books in Sergio's youth remind him of the doodles he did for
the margins of MAD Magazine, and why he enjoyed doing them.
	I forgot if Sergio did say he put any of his animations to film,
but if he did I do not think they were significant to him. Later on
though (I think Sergio said around the time he was approached by the
Bloopers show), Sergio felt the field of animation has ballooned into so
many other possibilities. This made him feel uninformed and he wanted to
learn as much as he could about as many forms of animation as possible.
However, being older and fairly well established at the time, Sergio did
not feel comfortable in attending another formal college. Instead he
went to a number of colleges with animation departments around the West
Coast to review the portfolios of college students. Eventually he held
interviews with a few of the students and came across one student with
an animation reel, which had a style he really enjoyed and the technical
diversity he was looking for.
	I forget one of the stories in the student's reel, which Sergio
shared with us, or even the name of the student. Regardless, that
student was extremely talented and became Sergio's hired "apprentice."
They worked on some project together while the student taught Sergio
everything he knew about animation, stop-motion animation, claymation,
computer-assisted animation, etc etc... Eventually they parted ways and
apparently Sergio's old "apprentice" established his own very successful
special effects and animation studio called something like "Dream Quest"
and is a millionaire.

	Okay, I can not seem to remember much else about what Sergio
discussed of his past. The only other things, which come to mind, are
the upcoming Groo publications. I imagine you guys want to know about
those too. :)
	Naturally Sergio spoke about the 25th Anniversary Special, which
we all know just came out, so I will not go into details. At the time of
the panel Sergio thought it was already out and dealers at the
convention should have it, yet Sergio had none to sell at his own table.
<Argh!>
	Then there is the Hell on Earth Series, which is the four part
series coming out shortly through Dark Horse. We all pretty much know
about this. It basically involves the issue of Global Warming, hence its
title. Other than that I do not know much else.
	What I do know is during the talk about the anniversary special
and Hell on Earth the issue of Sergio being politically controversial
came up. Someone in fact asked Sergio if he ever received backlash for
his stories or political cartoons. Sergio stated he never really did and
he figures it is because those he might poke fun at criticize either:
1) Simply do not read or know about his comics or cartoons,
2) Consider his cartoons to be silly humor or set in another "world"
where their subject matter is not applicable to them, or
3) Most likely are two ignorant and closed minded to even realize
anything he produced is actually in reference to them.
	The other upcoming Groo project is the "Groo versus Conan",
which someone in the Groop has already mentioned is planned as a six
book series. When asked why it is being planned as six books instead of
four like most of the other Groo series, Sergio said it simply seemed
like the story ideas they have in mind would fit better in six books
rather than four. Also if there are six books, he would have more work
to earn more money with. Along those lines, everyone should probably
also not be surprised if two trade paper back compilations of both Hell
on Earth and the Groo Vs. Conan series magically appear on comic store
shelves.
	Sergio described the Conan project too. At first he was
skeptical about it all. For one thing, he could not imagine how the look
of a cross over would appear since Groo is so cartoon-like and Conan is
much more graphic. Secondly, he could not envision how the result of the
two encountering one would result. It is not like Conan could be killed
by Groo. After all, IT'S CONAN! He could not be killed by such an idiot.
On the other hand though, Sergio did not want to see his baby Groo
slaughtered either.
	Well, as I think it as been described to the Groop earlier, the
Conan series will be written as multiple story lines. The inspiration
was the movie "Rashomon" by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.
In the movie a Samurai is found dead and the events leading up to the
death are recounted by multiple people through secondary sources, which
for the movie audience results in an unclear outcome of what really
occurred.
	As for the way the look of the Groo Versus Conan series will
appear, it will be mixed. When only Groo is seen everything will look
like a Groo cartoon, and when Conan is the only one in the panel things
will seem more realistic. When both Groo and Conan are in a scene
together though, the image will flow from one character's style to
another depending on either the amount of space the character is taking
up or even what character seems to be winning at that moment.

	Okay, so I think that about does it for my coverage of the
"Spotlight on Sergio" panel during the Baltimore Comic Convention last
weekend. There are a few more minor things somewhat related to the panel
I would like to describe, but I will save that for a fourth (and I
promise LAST) segment of my report since this one definitely broke the
mold's size limit. :) Again I apologize for the length, but I would
think this particular segment had a good deal of interesting information
for many of you in the Groop.
	Take care all,
_TONE_