Word has reached the Spill that long-time New Yorker contributor, Kenneth Mahood passed away on Wednesday at age 90. Mr. Mahood contributed 81 cartoons and 5 covers to The New Yorker between 1951 and 1996. According to The Daily Mail, where he contributed cartoons for more than 27 years, he retired in 2009 at age 80. Here’s his bio on the British Cartoon Archive site.
His first New Yorker cartoon, a captionless drawing, appeared in the April 14, 1951 issue:
His first cover for The New Yorker appeared April 8, 1961; his last appeared January 7, 1991:
Back in February of 2020, I posted this piece about the addition of Mr. Mahood’s 1958 collection of cartoons to the Spill‘s library:
Ordered not long ago from a seller across the big pond, Kenneth Mahood’s 1958 cartoon collection, Not A Word To A Soul, arrived today and has been added to the Spill‘s cartoon library. Was very happy to see the dust jacket (and a protected dust jacket at that) in such great shape. What I didn’t realize about this collection (until today) is that it is made up entirely of captionless cartoons, such as you see on the cover. From the inside flap copy:
“…the intelligent enquirer after knowledge today does not need a preamble of word or lengthy caption to point the humour…The pictures tell their own wordless story, with your intelligent help. The story is all there for you, and it is much better that way.”