Tag: Tom Cheney

The Tilley Watch, The New Yorker March 18, 2019

News

The Cover: This is Malika Favre’s seventh cover for The New Yorker (according to the Contributors info on page 4). An exceptionally decorative cover for “The Style Issue”… Read more here. 

The Cartoonists:

The Cartoons:

A very Charles Addamsy David Sipress drawing this week (that’s a compliment, of course).

Cartoon placement on the page has been mentioned here numerous times: happy to say that seven (i.e., half) of the  cartoons in the issue were given breathing room. They look great.

Tom Cheney’s Hell’s Auditors cartoon especially caught my eye (it’s on page 29). I believe that this is the fourth time New Yorker cartoonists have specifically word-played with the Hell’s Angels “colors.” Jack Ziegler had two, this beauty, published in The New Yorker, February 27, 1989:

And an earlier one, published in The New Yorker, December 17, 1984:

And then there was this one by yours truly in the December 25th, 1995 issue of The New Yorker:

A quick search of The New Yorker‘s database shows over a hundred of its cartoons have incorporated a motorcycle.  Sometimes the bike and biker are bit players, and other times they’re the focus of the drawing.  An awful lot of the cartoons concern folks getting speeding tickets from a motorcycle cop (and many of them show the cop in-wait behind a billboard). 

There are a small number of cartoons with motorcyclists wearing colors, but the usage doesn’t include mention of the Hell’s Angels. Ed Arno’s motorcycle gang wearing jackets that read “Inflation Fighters” (published April 2, 1979) is one example. 

To return to the great Jack Ziegler for a moment, he used the Hell’s Angels colors once again, but left their name intact in this fabulous drawing published in The New Yorker, November 13, 2000:

A long long way from the subject of Hell’s Angels, for those interested in trivia: the first mention of a motorcycle cartoon in the New Yorker‘s database is Al Frueh’s cartoon in the February 13, 1926 issue.  The  second cartoon with a motorcycle in the picture was published December 7, 1929.  It set off a bit of a in-house squabble, but that’s a story for another time (the artist was Peter Arno).

______________________

Lastly, still no sight of Rea Irvin’s classic Talk masthead. Read about it here, and see it below:

 

The Wednesday Tilley Watch: Parker, Gerberg, Chast, Donnelly & More…

News

Items of interest this mid-week:

Two reminders of upcoming events.

On January 29, the great illustrator Robert Andrew Parker (shown below), whose work has appeared numerous times in The New Yorker, will be featured at The New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium. Details here.

________________________________________

On January 30th, Long-time cartoonist Mort Gerberg will be in conversation with The New Yorker‘s cartoon editor, Emma Allen. The event is a celebration of Mr. Gerberg’s new book, On The Scene. Details here.





…From the west coast, news that a television series in in the works based on Roz Chast‘s highly acclaimed book, Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?

———————————–

…and from the east coast here’s a CNN piece by Liza Donnelly on her recent live-drawing assignment at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.

—————————-

…there’s a new installment in the New Yorker‘s celebrity cartoon caption video series, Caption That Cartoon. This time it’s Adam Conover putting the caption marker to paper (I urge the magazine to ID the cartoonists whose work appears on these videos. Until they do I’ll provide IDs). In this episode the cartoonists are (in order of appearance):

Mick Stevens, Victoria Roberts, Jack Ziegler, Michael Crawford, Drew Dernavich, yours truly, Will McPhail, Frank Cotham, and Tom Cheney.

Above: Adam Conover looks over a Mick Stevens drawing in this screen grab from the video

New Yorker Caption Contest Friday

News

 

         This being the end of the traditionally news-less week (for New Yorker cartoons and cartoonists) leading up to the new year, I thought why not dedicate today’s post to the New Yorker‘s Caption Contest. Last time I checked, the contest had reached its 644th offering (with a windmill drawing by Bob Eckstein).  

Background: every time I’ve been involved in a New Yorker event (usually a panel discussion) the contest comes up in the Q&A. The most frequently asked multi-part question is: How does it work? Did the cartoon originally have a caption?  Do you (the cartoonists) get to judge?

Here’s how it works (from the cartoonists perspective).  The cartoons used in the contest are taken out of the weekly batches submitted by the magazine’s cartoonists.  Sometimes the selected cartoon has a caption that is (obviously) stripped from the cartoon.  Sometimes the submitted cartoon has no caption (I sometimes submit captionless cartoons just for the hell of it to see what  caption entrants might come up with. Here’s one example.). The cartoonists have no say in the process of selecting the winning captions. 

__________________________

News:

There’s a new celebrity video posted by The New Yorker featuring the actors John C. Reilly  and Will Ferrell trying their hands/minds at captioning a bunch of cartoons:

For the record, the cartoons are (in order of appearance) by P.C. Vey, Kaamran Hafeez, Tom Toro, Tom Cheney, a second by P.C. Vey, and the final two are by Liam Walsh.  I again encourage the folks in charge of these videos to have the celebs identify the cartoonists, or at least identify the cartoonists names in full somewhere on the screen. 

________________________________

Here’s a story about a fellow who won a recent contest (the drawing at issue is by yours truly…and ouch, the drawing takes a few hits). From the Wickedlocal.com, “‘It is I, Manbunzal’: Melrose Resident Alan Leo Wins The New Yorker Caption Contest”

_________________________________

Here’s a Facebook group dedicated to the contest: New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Rejects (and Enthusiasts). Enter all those bolded words in the search box and presto: you have an instant caption contest community.

_______________________________

Very Old News: everyone interested in the contest probably already has or decided not to have this book that came out in 2008.

 

Book Of Interest: I Think, Therefore I Draw

News

Published a couple of weeks ago, I Think, Therefore I Draw: Understanding Philosophy Through Cartoons (Penguin) includes enough New Yorker cartoons (among a number of non-New Yorker cartoons) to mention here. The New Yorker cartoonists represented (in order of their appearance): Paul Noth, John McNamee, Tom Cheney, Danny Shanahan, P.C. Vey, David Sipress, George Booth, Avi Steinberg, Amy Hwang, Leo Cullum, Mort Gerberg, P.S. Mueller, John Klossner, Aaron Bacall, Sam Gross, “Bud” Handelsman, Lee Lorenz, Michael Maslin, Jack Ziegler, Edward Koren, Matt Diffee, Eric Lewis, Edward Frascino, and Charles Barsotti.

The authors have this (in part) to say in their introduction: “Here, then, is a collection of our favorite philosophical cartoons and our annotations about what they teach us about the Big Questions in philosophy.”

You can sample the text by going to the Amazon listing and clicking on the “Look inside” feature.

 

The Monday Tilley Watch: The New Yorker Issue of April 9, 2018

News

Here’s  Bruce McCall speaking about his gluten-free-gluten cover, along with three cover sketches (a nice touch).

And here are the cartoonists in the issue:

A slightly different Monday Tilley Watch this week…I’m listing my first response as I (electronically) flip through the issue, as if the drawings are flashcards.

Bruce Eric Kaplan…rodents and a tiger — I really like the tiger.

Lars Kenseth…a Snidely Whiplash reversal.  Funny that the train is a toy (shades of Charles Addams).

Tom Cheney…internet mischief in olden times.

John Klossner…support food. Wonder what kind of animal is being served.  

Harry Bliss…Jake LaMotta on ice.  A very outta left field drawing.

Roz Chast…a wicked queen’s magic mirror, updated.

Paul Noth…a patient prefers male doctors.

Pia Guerra…a sacred cow & more

Ed Steed…strong strange man drawing, or strange strong man drawing.

William Haefeli…a lesson in capitalization.

Seth Fleishman…a turkey display, with color.

Joe Dator…a NYC tour bus. Finally, a comment on those noisy things that rumble around the great metropolis. 

Frank Cotham…a witness explains. 

Teresa Burns Parkhurst …an egg ponders. A candidate for The New Yorker Book of Poultry Cartoons.

Mike Twohy…a doggy snow globe.  I can’t get enough of dogs and snow globes. 

______________________________________________________________________

Keen-eyed observers will note that Rea Irvin’s classic Talk of The Town masthead is still in absentia. Here it is:

and here’s the stand-in:

To read more, go here.