Tuesday Spill: A Great Cartoon…By Charles E. Martin

A Great Cartoon…By Charles E. Martin (CEM)

Three bound volumes of The New Yorker arrived here yesterday — all from the 1950s. It’s just a coincidence that one of them includes the below drawing by Charles E. Martin (he usually signed his work, both cartoons and covers, “CEM”).  It’s one of my all-time favorite New Yorker drawings. If you own a copy of The New Yorker Album Of Drawings 1925-1975  you’ve probably run into it. If you have a copy of the October 23, 1954 New Yorker, you can see it as it appeared upon publication.  

A few things about this drawing — the things that, for me, make it great. First is the drawing itself.  CEM’s balancing act here is masterful. My friends, just look how he handled a complicated scene. In lesser hands (graphically speaking) the drawing, and the experience, would’ve suffered; we, the readers, would’ve been left with a fugazi.   

CEM’s drawing exhibits above par comedic dna: he needed only to show Donald Duck speaking, using one precise gesture — we all know that voice. The clincher, what makes the drawing successful and hysterical: the silently shushing man; his seriousness; the lighting on his face; the finger to the mouth (with a five fingered hand no less! Cartoonists have long exercised artistic license to show hands with four fingers). 

This is one of those slow-rolling drawings. There’s a lag time between the moment you see Donald Duck, and then see the shushing man, and then make the connection leading to the Oh! moment in your brain. That CEM used an iconic character as the central feature in his drawing, only to lead us to the a-ha moment shown primarily in the dark was a brilliant move; understatement as statement.  I have to confess that that is exactly the kind of work that made me fall so hard, some time back, for The New Yorker cartoon. 

Peter Arno famously defined a successful New Yorker cartoon as having a one-two punch. He didn’t give us a time-frame for the one-two, just that it needed to happen. CEM’s great drawing is a perfect example of how the one-two can happen in slo-mo. 

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Charles E. Martin’s A-Z Entry: 

Charles E. Martin ( CEM) (photo left above from Think Small, a cartoon collection produced by Volkswagon. Photo right, courtesy of Roxie Munro) Born in Chelsie, Mass., 1910, died June 18, 1995, Portland, Maine. New Yorker work: 1938 – 1987. Number of New Yorker cartoons: 623  Number of New Yorker covers: 187.

See more of Charles E. Martin’s cartoons here on The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Bank site.