Being Eustace Tilley; Roger Angell Remembers James Stevenson; Oscar Time! Liza Donnelly Back on the Red Carpet Live Drawing the Oscars, Drooker’s Oscar Cover, Eckstein’s Oscar Wielding Eustace

    Eustace Tilley is of course a fictional character — commonly referred to as The New Yorker‘s mascot.  There is a suggested backstory to Tilley himself in Lee Lorenz’s Art of The New Yorker: 1925-1995; there are best guesses elsewhere as to why Rea Irvin (see below) decided to submit the cover to Harold Ross to adorn Ross’s inaugural

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The Thanksgiving Turkey’s New Yorker Cover & Cartoon Debut

Two Thanksgivings passed by in the New Yorker‘s earliest years before a turkey made the cover.  The artist for the issue of November 19, 1927: the one-and-only Rea Irvin. Here’s Mr. Irvin’s entry on Ink Spill‘s “New Yorker Cartoonists A-Z”: Rea Irvin  (pictured above. Self portrait above from Meet the Artist) *Born, San Francisco, 1881; died in the Virgin Islands,1972.

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Exhibit of Interest: R. Crumb’s Early Work; More Spills with Liza Donnelly, Victoria Roberts, Michael Crawford, and a Piece on newyorker.com’s Videos

The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery will exhibit “R. Crumb: Early Works, 1965 – 1967″ Details here. Mr. Crumb’s New Yorker debut was a cover for the 1994 anniversary issue.  His cover, titled “Elvis Tilley” marked the first break in the magazine’s sixty-eight year old tradition of running Rea Irvin’s classic Eustace Tilley  on the cover of the anniversary issue. (For

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