The Cover: A hot dog cart guy gets some beach time on Peter De Seve’s cover. Read the Cover Story here.
The Cartoonists:
The Newbies: Making their New Yorker print debut this week: Victor Varnado and Akeem Roberts. They become the record-setting nineteenth and twentieth new cartoonists entering the magazine’s stable of artists this year and the forty-fifth and forty-sixth new artists brought in under cartoon editor Emma Allen’s stewardship, begun in May of 2017.
The Cartoons: Brief thoughts on some of the thirteen cartoons in the issue:
Roz Chast’s Ordinary Kreskin drawing (p. 37). Love Ms. Chast’s right-to-the-point drawings, like this one. Perhaps not so unusual, but noticeable: she’s drawn Mr. Kreskin with five fingers (a lot of cartoonists find four will do for their cartoon characters).
Liana Finck’s talking baby (p. 44). A terrific twist on an end-of-life sentiment. I found myself wondering if it would’ve been equally successful had the baby been talking to another baby.
Ed Steed’s hammered drawing (p.54). At first glance on my laptop, before zooming in on the drawing I thought that Mr. Steed had done a mash-up drawing with George Booth. If you squint your eyes, it’s a very Boothian room (the perspective, the hanging ceiling lamp, the floorboards, wall objects). 100% Steedian is the idea itself and the Steedian happily hammering woman.
My confused initial take on seeing the drawing leads me to toss out a suggestion. There’s been plenty written on this site about cartoon collaboration, but those duets have involved a writer teamed with an artist (or two artists collaborating) with just one person doing the drawing. Howz about for fun we see some artists team-up and create a drawing or two with multiple styles in one frame. Some suggestions: Chast/Finck, Dator/Donnelly, Hwang/Shanahan, Sipress/Allenby, Kenseth/Koren…just a thought. (Liza Donnelly and I had a ton ‘o’ fun doing a series of mash-up full-page graphic pieces for our 2009 collection, Cartoon Marriage)
Paul Noth’s line of succession drawing (p. 58). Mr. Noth delivers a great drawing. I only wish it had been given more breathing room (such as Mr. Steed’s).
Robert Leighton’s drawing (p.32) features a caption that would probably be right at home in a positive thinking seminar. Yet another Leighton drawing destined for many a refrigerator.
Karen Sneider’s funny fish in bed recalls the classic George Price drawing published in the magazine’s issue of December 21, 1963.
Rea Irvin: Mr. Irvin (with Harold Ross and his then-wife, Jane Grant) was a founder of The New Yorker‘s graphic architecture. Consider his adapted typeface (the so-called Irvin typeface) that is part of the magazine’s DNA, the breadth of cartoon worlds he encouraged as art supervisor, his department heading designs, and his numerous covers (including, of course, the magazine’s brilliant first that gave us Eustace Tilley). Tis a puzzlement that his iconic heading for the Talk Of The Town remains under a tarp. Here it is below, and here’s where you can read about its removal in 2017.
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Today’s Daily Cartoonist’s Cartoon
Singin’ under the drip from Amy Kurzweil, who began contributing to The New Yorker in 2016. Visit her website here.
