The Cover: Ivan Brunetti returns with a cat person/dog person cover. Read here what he had to say about the cover.
The Cartoonists & Cartoons:
I spend the wee hours of every Monday morning looking through the latest issue of The New Yorker (it’s posted online at around 4am). I look at every cartoon at least twice, then I close my laptop and think about the cartoons I just saw. The ones that stick with me — the ones I think about the most, are the ones noted here on The Monday Tilley Watch. And so it is this week with these four (in no particular order):
Liana Finck’s (p. 40) umbrella drawing grabbed me immediately. It reminded me of an early New Yorker drawing by her published in 2014 (she began contributing to The New Yorker in 2013) titled Snow Falling On Accountants (I liked that one so much it’s now part of the Spill‘s collection of originals). The drawing has a 1970/1980s-era William Stieg-ian quality to it.
Roz Chast’s Wizard of Oz drawing (p. 54). I’m a fan of Ms. Chast’s outdoorsy drawings (like this one for instance). I associate Oz with spectacular color (the film is black & white til Dorothy lands in Oz and opens up the door of her farmhouse). We’ve all seen enough of Ms. Chast’s terrif color work so that I can (possibly) be forgiven for imagining this drawing colorized.
The lead off drawing in the issue is by Adam Douglas Thompson. I like the simplicity of this cartoon — the way Mr. Thompson’s shown us exactly what we need to see, and no more. Rats (and mice) have a long New Yorker cartoon history (here’s a favorite Sam Gross drawing from 1999).
David Borchart’s end of summer drawing (p. 39) is quite fab. Mr. Borchart, as he usually does in his work, gives us a world to think about. And, of course, the drawing itself is spectacular (note how the ferry leaves a wake).
Cartoon placement/sizing: All of the cartoons in this issue have been given good breathing room. A few examples: William Haefeli’s (p.31), Sharon Levy’s (p.59), and Lars Kenseth’s (p.22).
Rea Irvin’s Lost Masthead: Gone since the Spring of 2017, but not forgotten here.
