Antonio Prohías 1-17, 1921 to 2-24, 1998, born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, was a cartoonist most famous as the creator of the comic strip Spy vs Spy for Mad magazine. When Antonio retired due to health problems, Duck Edwing became the new writer and Bob Clarke became the new artist, until 1997, when Peter Kuper toke over as both the writer and artist for the comic. 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. Prohias also wrote and drew six paperback collections featuring the Spys. 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."[1] Two years after Prohias' debut in the magazine, cartoonist Sergio Aragonés made the trek from Mexico to New York in search of work. Because Aragonés' command of English was then shaky, he asked that Prohias 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."[2] Twelve years later, Mad writer Frank Jacobs reported that Prohias' 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." Although he is most famous for Spy vs Spy, the majority of his comic strips, such as El Hombre Siniestro 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' other work can be seen in Spy vs Spy: The Complete Casebook (Watson-Guptill, 2001) and 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 Rive

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