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It’s a ways off (May of 2023) but no time like the present to note Julia Wertz’s next book, Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story.
From the publisher:
“In her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery.”
Ms. Wertz began contributing to The New Yorker in 2015. Her Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History Of New York was published in 2017.
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We haven’t done a “First and Last” post for awhile. The “F&L” shows us the very first New Yorker published cartoon by an artist and their very last published New Yorker cartoon (in their lifetime).
W.B. Park contributed 55 cartoons to the magazine.* His first, shown directly below, appeared in the issue of July 13, 1981.
His last, shown below, appeared in the issue of March 20, 2000.
Looking through Mr. Park’s work this morning, I was reminded how easily his drawings fit into that time period at the magazine, joining other graphically like-minded cartoonists such as Leo Cullum, Mick Stevens, and “the Godfather of Contemporary New Yorker cartoonists,” Jack Ziegler.
As far as I know, his 1987 book, Off The Leash! was his only cartoon collection.
An obit here, dated January 8, 2021, via D.D. Degg on The Daily Cartoonist.
An obit from The Orlando Sentinel.
*Mr. Park’s Wikipedia entry here. [the Wikipedia entry says Mr. Park had “over 60 cartoons published in The New Yorker,” but the New Yorker database lists 55].
His Spill entry:
W.B. Park Born, 1936, Sanford, Florida. Died, January 2, 2021. New Yorker work:1981 –2000. Key Collection: Off The Leash! (Topperhill, 1987).