The Issue: This is the “Power Issue,” appropriately enough for an issue dated the day before the election. The issue includes a star contributor: Barack Obama, The 44th President of The United States.
The Cover: Richard McGuire’s cover design reminds me a little of the 1960s television show, The Time Tunnel.
You can read a Q&A with Mr. McGuire here ( The Time Tunnel is not mentioned).
The Cartoonists:
Twenty cartoons, twenty-one cartoonists (Barry Blitt has a Sketchbook). Two duos (the Spill counts duos as one cartoonist): Harry Bliss & Steve Martin, Sophie Lucido Johnson & Sammi Skolmoski. Two cartoonists are making their debut in the magazine: Daryl Seitchik, and Arantza Pena Popo. They are the twentieth and twenty-first cartoonists added to The New Yorker‘s stable this year, and the seventy-third and seventy-fourth added since Emma Allen became the magazine’s cartoon editor in May of 2017.
The Cartoons:
It’s always great to see an Edward Koren drawing in the magazine. As a bonus, his work is given ample space on the page. Mr. Koren, as has been mentioned here often, is our senior contributing cartoonist (senior as measured by years contributing) — this is his fifty-eighth year. His first New Yorker cartoon appeared May 26, 1962.
A number of the drawings caught my eye this week: the Mini-Me Jackson Pollock aforementioned Bliss/Martin collaborative effort (it’s on page 47); Sophia Warren‘s perfect-for-this-moment ghost cartoon (p.56); Maggie Larson‘s spot-on hat drawing (p.48) made me recall Joseph Farris‘s brief run of sequential hat-themed drawings in the 1980s (here’s one); David Sipress‘s very funny pilgrim drawing (p.43); Adam Douglas Thompson‘s brooch drawing (p.58) — the word “brooch” kills me every time. Lars Kenseth‘s boat pond drawing (p.59) took me back to Charles Addams’s numerous boat pond drawings (one example…and another). I’d love to see Mr. Kenseth pick up where Addams left off, boat pond-wise.
The Rea Irvin Talk Masthead Watch
Want to read more about Rea Irvin‘s “mere reassuring blur”…link here.