From Gary Cundall comes this question of the greatest importance…
I did a search for this before I wrote this and I didn't find the answer. I'd like to know how did you meet Sergio Aragonés and how did you start working together?
Back in the late sixties, we had a comic book club that met every Saturday at the Palms Recreation Center in West L.A. I was the president and we had about 50-60 members over the three or so years of the club's existence. During that time, the one and only guest speaker we ever had was Sergio. One of our members spotted a piece about him in Life magazine that mentioned he lived in Los Angeles. It turned out Sergio was listed in the phone book so this member called him up, secured an interview for a fanzine he was then trying to publish and arranged for Sergio to come to a meeting. So I met him at that meeting, albeit briefly.
Over the next few years, I ran into Sergio a number of places and to my amazement, he remembered me. So we got to be friends that way. Together with a wonderful writer-editor named Don Rico, we founded the Comic Art Professional Society. At the time, Sergio was beginning to do some comics of his own creation and copyright, and at first, he teamed with Don to supply the dialogue. That didn't work out to the satisfaction of either so he turned to me and there was really no grand decision. He just came over to my apartment one day and said, "Hey, will you help me with this thing I'm working on?" and I (of course) said, "Sure," and suddenly we were collaborators. Groo started soon after that, followed by other endeavors…and I guess this is a pretty boring story but that's how these things sometimes come about. Maybe one of these days, we'll make up a better story and I'll write it and Sergio will draw it and we'll both swear that's how it happened.