How Many Book of New Yorker Whatever Cartoons Are There?

It all started in 1990 with the publication of The New Yorker Book of Cat Cartoons, then the obvious follow-up,  The New Yorker Book of Dog Cartoons. After Dogs the series  expanded to all sorts of subjects — you know, the ones  cartoonists tend to visit at one time or another: lawyers, politicians, love, doctors, etc., etc.).

Eventually the custom books began (MoMA, CNN, HBO, Harvard University…) My favorite in the array shown above  is The New Yorker  Custom Cartoon Book: a meta-ish sort of traveling salesman’s sampler.

Some years back I asked a Cartoon Bank employee how many of these custom books were produced (I was trying to understand if I should try for a complete collection).   The answer was, “like a thousand”  — a number I believe is probably a little high.

There are a number of titles missing from the Ink Spill library (to name a few: Art, Baseball (Edited by the late Michael Crawford) and Golf — there is, oddly,  a French golf title in the Spill collection: Le Monde Du Golf).  As for custom books, I’ve yet to score a copy of The Wit and Wisdom of Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, The President of George Washington University, among other titles.   How many of these custom cartoon books are there? Your guess may be as good as the Cartoon Bank employee’s.