Tuesday Spill: The New Yorker Centenary Covers…Puzzlements!
Looking over the covers of The New Yorker’s special issues celebrating the magazine’s 100th birthday I came upon a few instances that caused me to wonder. Please bear with me as I take a tour through the particulars below; I apologize ahead of time for the uber-weedsiness of it all.
As mentioned here not too long ago, The New Yorker celebrated its 100th birthday by publishing four special “Centenary” issues. Three of those four issues included Rea Irvin’s iconic “Eustace Tilley” February 21, 1925 cover art.
Irvin’s original Eustace Tilley ((albeit with the addition of “100” applied just below the logo, and of course, the 2025 price and date) appeared on the cover in 2025 just once — on Centenary issue #1, dated February 17 & 24, 2025; it appeared within the issue for Centenary magazine issue #3 (September 1 & 8, 2025) and #4 (December 1, 2025). Centenary issue #3 (May 12 & 19, 2025) did not include Irvin’s Eustace Tilley cover.
Here then are all of the Centenary covers, grouped by date of publication.
Centenary Issue #1 Covers, Feb 17 & 24, 2025. (Top row: Rea Irvin. Middle row, l-r: Mariscal, Kunz, Rosa, Ejaita. Bottom row: Marshall
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Centenary Issue #2, May 12 & 19, 2025 (all covers by Niemann)
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Centenary issue #3, September 1 & 8, 2025 (l-r: Sherman, Rea Irvin)
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Centenary issue #4, September 1 & 8, 2025. (l-r: Favra, Rea Irvin)
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Now for the weedsy stuff, brought to you in two parts.
Part 1: Centenary Issue #3, May 12 & 19, 2025
It’s the non-Eustace Tilley (double) Centenary issue #3 of May 12 &19, 2025 that will always puzzle me. As I mentioned back in the December 29th ’25 Spill post, why not make a collectible set of four Tilleys for the 100th bash? Well, now as we approach the February 2026 anniversary issue, it’s a bit late for why nots.
I’m coming back to the non-Tilley May 12 & 19, 2025 issue this week after recently coming across the below very orangey Niemann cover image (with flap) while doing one of my daily online searches. I found this image on Amazon. The cover is dated May 12 & 19, 2025.
I didn’t recognize it (it wasn’t included with the print edition I received in the mail). And so I went to The New Yorker (subscribers only) online archive to the issue of May 12 & 19, 2025. Oddly, it doesn’t appear there. I Googled “The New Yorker May 12 & 19, 2025,” and this New Yorker Facebook post showed up. It shows the orange cover as well as another hitherto unseen (by me anyway) Niemann baseball cover for the May 25, 2025 issue (you can see it at the top of this post with the group identified as Centenary issue #3)
My questions are these (beside the already posed why no Eustace Tilley in the issue):
Did the bird cover and baseball cover appear on, or within print editions, or are they strictly online?
If they did appear in print editions, why aren’t they included in the archive?
Here’s how the Niemann covers are handled in The Table Of Contents (print edition and online archive edition):
There’s no mention (that I can find) that a quartet of Niemann covers exist for Centenary issue #2. We get only the heading “Covers”; the two in the issue apparently fall under the same title: “Spotted In New York City.”
Back in May of 2025, had you come across the Facebook link I mentioned earlier, you would have discovered there were two more “Spotted in New York” covers. But if you somehow missed the Facebook link, well then you’d be in my shoes, discovering, by happenstance, there were more.
Part Two: Centenary Issue #1, February 17 & 24, 2025
Today, looking at the Table of Contents for all four of the Centenary issues, I found another head scratcher — this one concerns the covers credited in Centenary issue #1, dated February 17 & 24, 2025.
Here’s how the covers are credited in the magazine:
We see after Mr. Irvin’s (Cover 1), four artists credited for (Cover 2), and one for (Cover 3). The word “or” appears for Cover 2 suggesting the reader won’t be seeing all four covers (in one issue) commissioned. Fair enough!
Here’s the head scratcher: go to The New Yorker‘s online archive (if you’re a subscriber) and you will see two covers following Rea Irvin’s (Cover 1). The Contributors page for the online issue credits Anita Kunz for Cover 2. It also credits Camila Rosa for Cover 2 (Kerry James Marshall is credited for Cover 3). No other cover artists appear on the Contributors page. Confusingly, Cover 2 shown in the online issue belongs to neither Kunz nor Rosa. It is by Diana Ejaita, who is not credited on the Contributors page.
In my print edition of Centenary issue #1, Cover 2 is by Javier Mariscal. Again, Kunz and Rosa appear on the Contributors page, credited with Cover 2. Mariscal does not appear on the Contributors page.
Two more questions:
Is there a Contributors page out there crediting Ejaita and Mariscal?
Are there Contributor pages correctly aligning the covers in the issue with the cover artists?
Puzzlements abound!
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