Antonio Prohías (January 17, 1921 – February 24, 1998) was a Cuban-American cartoonist. He was the creator of the satirical comic strip Spy vs. Spy, which he illustrated for Mad magazine from 1961 to 1987.

Biography

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.

Two years after Prohías's debut in the magazine, cartoonist Sergio Aragonés made the trek from Mexico to New York in search of work. Because Aragonés's command of English was then shaky, he asked that Prohías 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." Twelve years later, Mad writer Frank Jacobs reported that Prohías's 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." Al Jaffee joked, "Antonio is non-lingual!"

  • Oveja Negra: Also known as Black Sheep. A young boy wearing a propeller beanie, T-shirt and shorts. He appears in some of the artwork for the Complete Casebook, including the "funeral" picture. (It's worth noting that, in the aforementioned funeral picture, Oveja Negra is the only one who appears to be mourning.) He debuted in Informacion in 1949.
  • Anti-Communist and Anti-Castro cartoons: Featured in The Complete Spy vs. Spy Casebook, shows arguably Prohías' most serious cartoons, such as depicting Castro as a mermaid singing a siren song to lure sailors to their deaths, or a skeleton having difficulty eating meals with the caption "Gentlemen, it is very difficult to eat with a hammer and sickle!"

Other items published in Mad

  • "One-Shot Dept.: Vengeance" (#66, October 1961, p. 13)

:A caveman kills another caveman with an arrow to the head. The dead body nourishes the living arrow, which grows into a tree. In the modern day, a motorist who resembles the first caveman crashes into the tree.

  • "Follow Through Dept.: More Than Meets the Eye!" (also #66, pp. 33–34)

: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.

  • Issue #101 (March 1966, front cover)

: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). However, in Mad Cover to Cover, Sergio Aragonés is credited with the gag.

  • "Flowery Language Dept.: A Portfolio of MAD Blooming Idiosyncrasies" (#115, December 1967, pp. 28–30)

:Various human conditions and emotions personified by flowers.

  • "The Artist" (#138, October 1970, back cover; reprinted in Fall '85 Special and XL #2, in which Prohías was the artist of the issue)

: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.

  • "Split Personalities Dept.: The Irony of Fate" (Spring '71 Special, pp. 11–13)

: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. Two eggs are also lovers until they hatch, as one is a bird and the other a bird-eating snake.

  • "The Tourist" (#150, April 1972, inside front cover)

: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.

  • "Finders, Weepers Dept.: The Treasure Map" (#159, June 1973. p. 19)

:A collector discovers a treasure map hidden in the dug-out pages of an old book, travels to a hazardous jungle to find the treasure, and then finds that the treasure is simply the pages dug out of the book.

  • "Fortune Kookie Dept.: The Old Ball Game" (#161, September 1973, p. 42)

:A man visits a fortune teller, whose crystal ball sees him 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.

  • "Broom Shtick Dept.: A Witch's Tale" (#163, December 1973, p. 33)

: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.

  • "Scotched on the Rocks Dept.: The Photo Contest" (Winter '73 Special, p. 9)

: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.

  • "Grin and Bearer Dept.: On a Safari" (#167, June 1974, pp. 29–30)

:An explorer in Africa captures a giraffe, his guides standing on each other's shoulders to transport it in a cage.

  • "MAD Artists' Response to an Article: Draw This Figure" (#178, October 1975, pp. 2–3)

: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.

  • "Shell-Shock Dept.: The Pearl" (Fall '75 Special, pp. 11–12)

:An oyster travels through the hands of several people, the last finally opening it and finding an advertisement for a pearl shop.

  • "Don Martin Dept.: One Special Day in the Dungeon" (#277, March 1988, p. 45)

:Prohías came up with a prison birthday cake gag for the last strip Don Martin drew for MAD.

  • "Quick Draw Guffaw Dept.: Play Pictionary with the MAD Artists" (#284, January 1989, pp. 14–15)

:Given the theme "Gluttony," Prohías contributes a quickly-drawn panel of the two spies dining on a pig with a bomb in its mouth.

  • "National Business Machines" (Super Special March 1996, p. 25)

: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 product demonstrators, who is revealed to be a robot.

References

  • Comic creator: Antonio Prohías
  • Completely Mad by Maria Reidelbach, Little, Brown and Company, 1991.
  • Totally Mad CD-ROM collection, Broderbund, 1999.
  • Complete list of Prohías' work for MAD Magazine
  • Cartoons by Antonio Prohías in El Avance Criollo
  • Antonio Prohias on the Lambiek Comiclopedia