Someone who for some reason didn't want me to use his name here did want me to answer this question…
As you surely know, there are a number of sites on the web where one can find credits for the creative personnel on comic books. Ideally, any credit on such a site that is not the product of confirming research would be tagged with a note like "attribution by Artemis Femur, Jan. 6, 2017," but regrettably, such notes are not often seen. This calls into question potentially every credit that is published on such a site (except those that a site user can confirm from the actual publication or other source; in which case, the website might be somewhat superfluous).
I have wondered about the precision of credits on such sites regarding your friend, Sergio Aragonés. Sergio is routinely credited on Groo and other comics with pencils and inks. And while I have no reason to doubt that the art on such comics is, in fact, Sergio's, I have somewhere gotten the idea that he generally approaches the blank page with pen (not pencil) in hand. For accuracy, would it be appropriate on such sites to leave blank the "Pencils" field, and to credit Sergio only in the "Inks" field? Or is it my own impression of his work habits that is inaccurate?
Your impression of his work is inaccurate. He does not pencil every single thing before he starts drawing in ink but neither do most artists who ink their own pencils. Sergio probably does less pencil work than any of them but he definitely does a lot more than you think. He kind of has to because it isn't just about drawing the people and things but designing the individual panels and the page as a whole, and making sure that Panel 1 leads properly to Panel 2 and that Panel 2 properly follows Panel 1. There's a lot of thinking on those pages and Sergio does a lot of his thinking with a pencil.
Now, if did work only in ink…well, the designations of "penciler" and "inker" on a comic book do not just refer to the art supplies in use. The penciler is the person who designs the panels, figures out what goes where and what each character will look like in each panel. So if someone does that but does all or most of it in ink, you should probably still refer to him or her as the penciler.
And before someone writes in to ask about the titles of "plotter" and "writer" on a comic book, you should know that I'm already on the job. Coming up shortly here, I have a series of articles that attempt to break down the writing process a bit. I think it's necessary because an awful lot of folks who write about comics use those terms with very different definitions. The first of these pieces will be along in the next week or so.
