Antonio Prohías, Creator of Spy vs. Spy and Much More

09-16-1960-1.jpgAntonio Prohías is best known for creating MAD Magazine‘s Spy vs. Spy. Spy vs. Spy is immediately recognizable by any age group because of its amazing minimalist yet non-reductive portrayal of political conflict. It should come as no surprise that its creator Antonio Prohías honed his skills inking political cartoons for newspapers like El Avance Criollo.
We found these cartoons thanks to Will Canova, the Digital Library Center’s newspaper digitization coordinator. Will was processing El Avance Criollo and, noticing the incredibly well styled political cartoons, quickly noted that these cartoons were done by none other than Spy vs. Spy’s creator Antonio Prohías.
The University of Florida Libraries’ copies of 1960-1961 issues of El Avance Criollo are currently being digitized and will soon be online here. The cartoons themselves are available right now through our Flickr Photostream and will also soon be in the UF Digital Collections within the El Avance Criollo issues and separately (as JPEG and JPEG2000 images and as a downloadable PDF).
For more on Antonio Prohías, listen to NPR’s program on him, read his obituary in the New York Times, and check out Spy vs Spy: the Complete Casebook  which includes historical and biographical essays.