Antonio Prohías

Antonio Prohías
Born (1921-01-17)January 17, 1921
Cienfuegos, Cuba[1]
Died February 24, 1998(1998-02-24) (aged 77)
Nationality Cuban
Area(s) Cartoonist
Notable works
 Spy vs. Spy

Antonio Prohías (January 17, 1921 – February 24, 1998), born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, was a cartoonist most famous as the creator of the comic strip Spy vs. Spy for Mad magazine.

In 1946, Prohías was given the Juan Gualberto Gómez award, recognizing him as the foremost cartoonist in Cuba. By the late 1940s, Prohías had begun working at El Mundo, the most important newspaper in Cuba at the time. In January 1959, Prohías was the president of the Cuban Cartoonists Association; after Fidel Castro seized power, he personally honored the cartoonist for his anti-Batista political cartoons. But Prohías soon soured on Castro's actions of muzzling the press. When he drew cartoons to this effect, he was accused of working for the CIA by Fidel Castro's government.[1] Consequently, he resigned from the newspaper in February 1959 .

With his professional career in limbo, Prohías left Cuba for New York on May 1, 1960, working in a garment factory by day and building a cartoon portfolio for Mad by night. Ten weeks later, he walked into Mad's offices unannounced. He spoke no English, but his daughter Marta acted as an interpreter for him.[1] Before he'd left, he had an $800 check and had sold his first three Spy vs. Spy cartoons to Mad. In late 1986, he sold his 241st and last Spy strip before retiring due to illness. Prohias also wrote and drew six paperback collections featuring the Spys. During an interview with the Miami Herald in 1983, Prohías gloated, "The sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel's accusation of me as a spy into a moneymaking venture."[2]

Two years after Prohias' debut in the magazine, cartoonist Sergio Aragonés made the trek from Mexico to New York in search of work. Because Aragonés' command of English was then shaky, he asked that Prohias be present to serve as an interpreter. According to Aragonés, this proved to be a mistake, since Prohías knew even less English than he did. When Prohías introduced the young artist to the Mad editors as "Sergio, my brother from Mexico," the Mad editors thought they were meeting "Sergio Prohías."[3] Twelve years later, Mad writer Frank Jacobs reported that Prohias' conversational English was limited to "Hello" and "How are you, brother?" Said Aragonés, who speaks six languages, "Even I could not understand him that well."

The Mad staff occasionally took group vacations, traveling en masse to other countries. Prohías took part in these vacations when possible, but as a Cuban exile, he had trouble gaining admission into some countries, and at the airport before a vacation to Italy, an airport official said, "You can leave if you want, but you can never come back." After the group returned, he presented a drawing to MAD publisher William M. Gaines, which was of him, with the Spies at his feet, letting his heart fly over the angry airport officials to the rest of the MAD gang, with a note at the bottom which, when translated, reads: "Mr. Gaines, my heart will always travel with you."

Although he is most famous for Spy vs. Spy, the majority of his comic strips, such as El Hombre Siniestro, La Mujer Siniestra, and Tovarich, were published mostly or only in Cuba. Altogether, only about 20 of his roughly 270 contributions to Mad were of anything other than the spy series. As a result, most of the available information on this other work comes from the Spy Vs Spy Complete Casebook (Watson-Guptill, 2001) and the Spy vs. Spy Omnibus (DC Comics, 2011).

He died of lung cancer at age of 77 and is buried in Woodlawn Park Cemetery and Mausoleum (now Caballero Rivero Woodlawn North Park Cemetery and Mausoleum) in Miami, Florida.

Characters other than Spy vs. Spy

Main article: Spy vs. Spy

Other items published in Mad

A caveman kills another caveman with an arrow to the head. The dead body with the arrow in it grows into a tree. In the modern day, a motorist who resembles the first caveman crashes into the tree.
Four comic strips, each three panels, are printed so that the middle panel, which explains the outcome, can be seen only by holding the page up to the light.
Prohías came up with the gag for the cover painting by Norman Mingo of Alfred E. Neuman reading Shakespeare in class, hidden behind a copy of this issue of MAD (rather than vice versa). But however, in Mad Cover to Cover, Sergio Aragonés is credited with the gag.
Various human conditions and emotions personified by flowers.
An artist sets up a picture frame around a beautiful landscape, runs a knife along the edge of the frame, and then walks away with a framed picture of the landscape, leaving a gaping hole in the spot where the land used to be.
Ten two-panel tales of star-crossed lovers; for example, two babies who love each other, being carried by storks, are dropped off separately in West and East Berlin.
A man is persuaded by a window display to sign up for a cruise, and then finds that the "cruise" is just a fake cardboard setup like the window display.
A collector discovers a treasure map hidden in the dug-out pages of an old book, travels to the jungle to find the treasure, and then finds that the treasure is simply the pages dug out of the book.
A man visits a fortune teller, whose crystal ball predicts that he soon will be behind bars; but he is a police officer who puts her in jail for fraud. Later, she sees him on the other side of the bars in the same way it was shown in the crystal ball.
A witch gets a new broom for her birthday and throws away her old broom. The old broomstick is used to make toothpicks, and restaurant customers who use the toothpicks have their teeth fly away.
A man fakes a photo of the Loch Ness Monster to enter in a contest, and then finds that the winning photo shows the real monster behind him as he is taking his fake photo.
An explorer in Africa captures a giraffe, his guides standing on each other's shoulders to transport it in a cage.
In place of the usual letters page, and in a parody of the typical art school advertisement, 12 MAD artists contribute their renditions of a horse, Prohías drawing it as a pair of chess knights portrayed by the spies glaring at each other.
An oyster travels through the hands of several people, the last finally opening it and finding an advertisement for a pearl shop.
Prohías came up with the gag for the very last strip Don Martin drew for MAD.
Given the theme "Gluttony," Prohías contributes a quickly-drawn panel of the two spies dining on a pig with a bomb in its mouth.
In a never-before-published older strip, a man enters a showroom, sees demonstrations of various models of a product, and makes a purchase; but rather than buying the product, he buys one of the robots that demonstrated the product.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Grimes, William. "Antonio Prohias, 77; Drew 'Spy vs. Spy' Cartoon," New York Times (March 2, 1998).
  2. ↑ "Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook", Prohías, A. Watson-Guptill, 2001
  3. ↑ Aragonés, Sergio (2007). "Biography". Retrieved 2007-03-18.

External links

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