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Underground > Comic Books >

New Yorker Cartoonists

02:46 / 23.09.02

Before I fell into the clutches of the Comics forum, I had been training myself to read New Yorker cartoons... and one day I figured out that I was having specific responses to specific cartoonists, and that what I was responding to was almost purely the line. That is, as opposed to the caption where the joke is supposed to be. - Persephone, from this thread.

Before you fell into our clutches?!? Don't mean you've stopped reading 'em, Herc! My former roommates used to tease me by calling me "The Peter Arno of this generation" because I stacked books by Arno all over our coffee table. I wish I was following in Arno's footsteps. That thick, chunky line is unlike anything else in comics today. Drooool..... The thin, constant line of George Price, hammering every piece of composition precisely in place. James Thurber and his line that never quite reaches its destination, but always takes you someplace even more sublime. The used bookstores and libraries of the world are spilling over with comics' greatest hidden treasures.

Anybody else follow the Yorker? Part of me dreams of getting in its pages, but my head isn't able to get itself around the gag cartoon format.

11:32 / 23.09.02

Still reading them, to be sure! The cartoons are the only thing that I read in the New Yorker these days, because of my ...*whispers*... reading problem.

*hits self on the side of face with book*

I'll post my examples here, then! Hooray!

01:51 / 27.09.02

Nobuddy cares about New Yorker cartoonists but us chickens, moriarty... but here are some to look at, anyway. Two I like, and two I don't like.

Booth is my utter, utter favorite. I don't even know what to say about him. Maybe that I love his cats.

My other favorite is Barsotti. Funnily enough Barsotti does dogs; but I put another really good one, so you can really see the line in action.

Actually I don't not like Koren. But he's right on the edge of scratchiness for me; scratchy lines make me itch.

And hissssss... if you can say anything that shows me what's good about Roz Chast!

(You know, I just noticed when I was getting these images... a lot of new names in there, too. Since when has P.S. Mueller been getting published there, that's pretty cool...?)

Murray Hamhandler

16:31 / 27.09.02

Maybe I'm just thick, but I have to take the Seinfeld-ian perspective on New Yorker cartoons. Most of the time, I can't make heads or tails of them. Actually, I often enjoy them from just that perspective. I like the thought of cartoonists making completely incomprehensible gag cartoons. It makes me giggle muchly.

17:21 / 27.09.02

But that's *exactly* right, Deric. That's why Booth is my favorite, there's nothing comprehensible about him at all!

And dude... a hand coming out of a tube of toothpaste! What more could you want?!

Murray Hamhandler

20:23 / 27.09.02

Well...alright, then! I thought it was maybe, you know, a New York thing that was simply zipping over my simple Midwestern head. Because, yeah...a hand out of a toothpaste tube. You can either drive yourself mad trying to figure out the reference or you can go "Whatever..." whilst grinning madly.

Hell, I could be a New Yorker cartoonist, then. I've been doing stuff like that for years. Can't say how good it is, but it definitely meets the 'incomprehensible' criteria...

20:43 / 27.09.02

Deric, you've been hanging out with those TCJ kids too much. Bad influences.

I like how the New Yorker has an annual cartoonist issue which takes a page or two to showcase their most incomprehensible cartoons.

I'm an admirer of the Harold Ross years at the New Yorker, which is decades removed from the current publication, so most of the current crop does nothing for me. All my heroes are dead.

Getting into the New Yorker is still pretty tough, I hear. I've been tempted to try, but honestly, I can't think of material in that vein. Shucks.

Murray Hamhandler

21:03 / 27.09.02

So do you go along w/Persephone's assessment then, moriarty? Are the New Yorker cartoons actually incomprehensible, or are you just humoring us?

06:29 / 28.09.02

I reckon they're pretty comprehensible... and I find myself reading the cartoons before getting down to any of the meaty articles and stuff.

A lot of them you have to look at a few times before the joke becomes apparent - and that goes for the cover too. But I don't mind that. I think overall they have a really sweet silliness to them.

So have you guys read IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN, by SETH? Seth's style is very much modeled on the style of NY-er cartoonists, and it's interesting to see it used in strip-cartooning. There's a really nice feel to it. The story in IAGLIYDW revolves around NY-er cartoonists too. It's a beauty. Can't remember who published it. hang on... the copy I've got is Drawn and Quarterly.

cheers

m.

23:21 / 28.09.02

Seth is great. He did this really nice sketch for me at the Toronto Comic Convention. I actually picked up a book of misheard song lyrics ("He's Got the Whole World in His Pants") because Seth did the illustrations. It had a Seth drawing of Popeye. How could I resist? I keep meaning to write him to see if that picture is for sale.

As for the New Yorker, we're talking about a magazine that has printed thousands of cartoons by hundreds of artists over many decades. I think it would be hard to say that they're all incomprehensible. Peter Arno, for instance, is almost never hard to understand. Thurber, Arno's opposite number, usually is incomprehensible, but in such a wonderful way that it always makes my day brighter. I doubt I've ever been in a used bookstore that didn't have one of his books, if you're interested. Be warned, like most New Yorker cartoonists he's an acquired taste. I don't think I've ever turned anyone onto his work, after years of trying.

01:22 / 29.09.02

I love Thurber, of course. I was going to scan some Thurbers for you moriarty, but you beat me to the punch. So maybe I have a taste for the incomprehensible, maybe that's me!

That really could be why I so strongly dislike Roz Chast, because her cartoons are always so plainly *about* something. But also because I hate those wobbly lines.

I looked for the Seth cartoon tonight... I found a big fancy book called Drawn & Quarterly, is that right? Do you have the volume/issue number? (Though I might read it in the store, the book was $30...)

01:46 / 29.09.02

Okay, maybe one...

I have often told about what happened when that hit Ross squarely between his fretful editorial eyes. He telephoned me in the country to say, 'Is the woman on the bookcase alive, or stuffed, or just dead?' I told him I would give the matter my gravest consideration and call him back, and I did. 'She has to be alive,' I told him. 'My doctor says a dead woman couldn't support herself on all fours, and my taxidermist says you can't stuff a woman.' He thought about it for a few seconds and then roared into the phone, 'Then, goddamn it, what's she doing naked in the house of her former husband and his second wife?' I told him he had me there, and that I wasn't responsible for the behavior of the people I drew.

But here's the best part:

...I had tried to draw a wife waiting for her husband at the top of a flight of stairs, but had got the perspective all wrong and suddenly found I had a woman on a bookcase.

12:21 / 30.09.02

hey, that cartoon is GREAT!

Persephone, the book in question is a stand-alone volume called IT'S A GOOD LIFE, IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN. It's published by Drawn and Quarterly, and it's a collection from the Series that Seth does which is called... Palookaville, I think.

you can order it here.

m.

11:55 / 16.10.02

Not about cartoons, as such, but about an illustration in the current New Yorker (dated October 14 & 21, 2002) caught my eye and reminded me of something I had been meaning to post. At the bottom of page118, there is an unsigned drawing of what can only be described as a sigil. I know I've seen these in issues past as well, but I've only the current issue before me now.

The thing looks like a lot of the sigils I made up during my brief magickal experimental phase (some of which worked, so perhaps I should saddle up that particular hobbyhorse again, soon). Anyone know which of the New Yorker artists drew it? Is the cartoon editor of the New Yorker pro-magick or does s/he simply like baroque squiggles of indeterminate meaning? Or most importantly, is this proof positive that an occult cabal controls the media elite?

14:38 / 23.09.04

"The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker" is now out.

A book and two CD-ROMs with 68,647 cartoons -- every single cartoon ever published by the New Yorker. Held, Arno, Hokinson, Thurber, Addams, Price, Petty, Darrow, Steig, and tons more, all searchable by date, artist and subject.

There are three holy grails for me in comics. One is the complete Mad Magazine, which already has been published. The second is the complete Peanuts, which is being published right now (and will continue for more than a decade). The third is this.

Sometimes life is good.