In my report on the Al Jaffee evening, I neglected to mention the award that was bestowed upon him. I also neglected to tell you a little about CAPS, the group that bestowed the award in question.
CAPS is the Comic Art Professional Society, a group founded in 1977 by Sergio Aragonés, Don Rico and myself. There was a pressing need for a place in Los Angeles where folks who worked in comic books and print cartoons could converge. To fill that need, we started this organization and began meeting monthly and soon after we also began having annual banquets.
Let me confess to something here. Though I was pleased to see Al Jaffee honored and similarly elated by previous evenings and other celebrations of great talents, I originally opposed all suggestions that CAPS honor anyone. I am intermittently and inconsistently anti-award.
I have been involved in the founding of about a dozen groups of writers, cartoonists, artists, etc., of one kind or another. In every single case, when the organization process commences, almost the first suggestion someone makes is that we set up some way to honor each other and give trophies. This is generally proposed by someone whose main motive is that they very much want to win such a thing and who plans to look humbly shocked when he or she is nominated.
Believing as I do that one cannot say, for example, that this guy who draws funny ducks is "better" than that lady who draws ninja warriors, I can't take creative awards too seriously. On the other hand, they usually make their recipients very happy and though I am sometimes anti-award, I am always pro-happiness…and with something like the award for Al Jaffee, there's another aspect. There's absolutely nothing wrong with loving someone and telling the world in some way that you love them. In fact, there is something wrong with not celebrating a guy like Al Jaffee.
So I have come around on the subject of awards. I have seen them go to the wrong people for the wrong reasons but I have also seen them go to the right people for the right reasons. And I have decided to gripe about the former but to focus on the latter.
The award CAPS gives out is called The Sergio and as you can see above, it's a statuette that looks like Sergio Aragonés. Odd tale of how that came about…one I've told here before. Here, copied 'n' pasted from an earlier posting here, is that tale…
Not long ago, the current CAPS board decided to present an annual award that would honor some great cartoonist's lifetime achievements. Sergio was asked to do an appropriate design sketch, and he did. It featured a generic cartoonist. This sketch was then turned over to master sculptor Ruben Procopio to turn into a statue, which he did. Along the way, it was decided to make two adjustments without Sergio's knowledge. One was to make the generic cartoonist look like Sergio. The other was to call the award The Sergio.
And actually, a third decision was made by the CAPS Board without Sergio knowing of it at the time. They decided that at the dinner to present the first one to Jack Davis, they'd also surprise Sergio and hand him the second.
That's right. Sergio Aragonés has now won so many cartooning awards that in order to receive any more of them, he has to design them himself.
So that's how the award came to look like and be named for my amigo. Al Jaffee, who is as fond of the real Sergio as anyone, seemed very pleased to get one. I will believe that for the rest of my life or until I see it offered on eBay, whichever comes first.