It’s silly to rate cartoonists, but around here, as anyone who follows Ink Spill knows, James Thurber is the #1 New Yorker cartoonist. Thinking about him on the eve of his birthday (he was born in Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894) I stood in front of the Thurber
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Harold Ross’s Last Cartoonist: Dana Fradon
By the late 1940s, Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s legendary founder and first editor, had assembled either by happy accident or design (depending on which version of the magazine’s history you want to believe) a stable of magazine cartoonists unrivaled in American publishing. Some have called that era of the magazine’s cartoons its Golden Age. The guiding forces of the
Read moreAnatol Kovarsky at 94: Still Drawing After All These Years
At 3 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon in late June, my wife and I, wearing our cartoonist historian hats, were welcomed into an apartment in a pre-war building along Manhattan’s west side. We made our way through a short hallway to a foyer lined with paintings. There were paintings on the walls, and paintings lined
Read moreAuthor’s Progress Report: Thomas Vinciguerra on his Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker
(above: foreground: Fritz Foord, Wolcott Gibbs, Frank Case (owner of the Algonquin Hotel) and Dorothy Parker. Standing, left to right: Alan Campbell, St. Clair McKelway, Russell Maloney and James Thurber. An Ink Spill Exclusive: Wolcott Gibbs and Co. in Upcoming Group Portrait There’ve
Read moreCollaborating Cartoonists; Video: Charles Addams
Collaborating cartoonists have been on my mind recently. Who are they, why do they do it? Does it double the fun? A spate of collaborations in The New Yorker within the past year caused me to dig into the subject and ask a few questions. To begin with, here’re a few words on the
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