The gent on the right is my longtime partner, Sergio Aragonés. The man on the left is Al Feldstein, whose many achievements in the world of comic art were noted here yesterday. In fairness, I should mention Mr. Feldstein's one moment of utter shame: In 1962, when Sergio wandered up to the MAD offices, he was an out-of-work, needy cartoonist, newly arrived in this country and, so far, unable to make much of a buck selling his pantomime cartoons. When he left the MAD offices, he was one of The Usual Gang of Idiots, about to begin a streak of appearing in every issue, and becoming one of the world's most honored drawers of silly pictures. (Well, to be accurate, he missed one issue of MAD since then due to a bad case of flu — but only one. Even with one miss, it's still an amazing record.) Feldstein and his associates decided that day in '62 that the man with the mustache had something special to offer the world of humor. And Sergio's been fooling them ever since.
The photo was taken a few hours ago, during the closing moments of Mid-Ohio Con here in Columbus, Ohio. As they say, a wonderful time was had by all. I enjoyed spending time with, among others, Jeff Smith, Dick Ayers, Tony Isabella, Dick Giordano, Paul Ryan, Steve Lieber, Dan Mishkin, Tom Mandrake, Bob Ingersoll, Roger Stern, Thom Zahler, Paul Storrie, Don Simpson, Alan Burnett, and I'm probably leaving out Someone Really Important. So please forgive me, Someone Really Important.
Oh, I know: Len Wein and Marv Wolfman were here and they specifically asked to be mentioned on this website. Okay, guys. Now what?
Anyway, at the risk of repeating what I said yesterday, this is a great con. If you can make it next year, do so. I'm certainly going to try to make it.