Antonio Prohías facts for kids

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. Consequently, he resigned from the newspaper in February 1959.

With his professional career in limbo, Prohías left Cuba for New York on May 1, 1960, working in a garment factory by day and building a cartoon portfolio for Mad by night. Ten weeks later, he walked into Mad's offices unannounced. He spoke no English, but his daughter Marta acted as an interpreter for him. Before he'd left, he had an $800 check and had sold his first three Spy vs. Spy cartoons to Mad. In late 1986, he sold his 241st and last Spy strip before retiring due to illness. Prohías also wrote and drew six paperback collections featuring the Spies. During an interview with the Miami Herald in 1983, Prohías gloated, "The sweetest revenge has been to turn Fidel's accusation of me as a spy into a moneymaking venture."

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!"

The Mad staff occasionally took group vacations, traveling en masse to other countries. Prohías took part in these vacations when possible, but as a Cuban exile, he had trouble gaining admission into some countries. At the airport before a Mad vacation to Italy, an airport official said, "You can leave if you want, but you can never come back." He later presented a drawing to MAD publisher William M. Gaines which showed himself being blocked by angry airport officials, letting his heart fly over their heads to the rest of the MAD gang. A note at the bottom translates to: "Mr. Gaines, my heart will always travel with you."

Although he is most famous for Spy vs. Spy, the majority of his comic strips, such as El Hombre Siniestro, La Mujer Siniestra, and Tovarich, were published mostly or only in Cuba. Altogether, only about 20 of his roughly 270 contributions to Mad were of subjects and gags other than his spy series. One of those was the iconic cover image for issue #154 in 1972, depicting Alfred E. Neuman eating an ear of corn while leaving a single row of kernels unscathed due to the gap in his upper teeth. Most of the available information on Prohías's other work can be seen in the Spy Vs Spy Complete Casebook (Watson-Guptill, 2001) and the Spy vs. Spy Omnibus (DC Comics, 2011).

He died of lung cancer at age of 77 and is buried in Woodlawn Park Cemetery and Mausoleum (now Caballero Rivero Woodlawn North Park Cemetery and Mausoleum) in Miami, Florida.

Characters other than Spy vs. Spy

• El Hombre Siniestro: (The Sinister Man) wore a wide-brimmed hat and overcoat and had a long pointed nose, becoming the prototype for the Spies. El Hombre Siniestro debuted in Bohemia in 1956, although in later years Prohías created new strips for Zig-Zag Libre after he moved to Miami.
• La Mujer Siniestra: (The Sinister Woman) Like her counterpart, La Mujer Siniestra is about the titular character causing misery for everyone else.
• Tovarich: Tovarishch is Russian for "comrade," and so Tovarich was meant to be both a representation of the Communist Soviet government and of Fidel Castro. He is a corrupt Soviet dictator meant to parody Fidel. However, since Castro had not yet announced he was a Communist, nobody could complain about the comic. Since the setting was Russia and not Cuba, it could not be explicitly found as criticism. When his Communist colleagues complained, he would reply, "What? What's wrong with it? It's not about Cuba, it's about Russia." Tovarich's appearance changed through the years; originally he wore a military cap with a star and had longer hair, but in the "funeral for Agapito" picture in the Complete Casebook, he wears a typical Russian ushanka (round rabbit fur hat) with a hammer and sickle on it. Tovarich first appeared in Prensa Libre in 1959, with a sampling of strips shown in the "Nyets to You Department" in MAD #68 of January 1962.
• The Diplomat: An extremely minor character, but noteworthy for the fact that he had his own small feature of comic strips in MAD's Big Book of Spy vs Spy Capers and Other Surprises (Warner Books, 1982) and appeared in the MADtv "Spy vs. Spy" short, "Defection". He also appeared in the Fall 1970 Special, in a group of strips that might be said to bear a slight resemblance to Otto Soglow's more benign The Little King. He wears a waistcoat, black jacket with coattails, a medal and a top hat, and also sports a long, pointed nose somewhat similar to that of the Spies.
• Erizo: A character who appears in the "funeral" picture in the Complete Casebook, although nothing about him or his comic is explained. He debuted in the magazine Carteles in 1948. Some comic pages can be found online.
• 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!"

See also

In Spanish: Antonio Prohías para niños