Wednesday Spill: Personal History: My First 10 (New Yorker Cartoons); Blitt On Clapton; Daily Cartoonists & Cartoons

Personal History: My First 10 (New Yorker Cartoons)

I’ve always loved making lists — a habit that eventually resulted in creating the Spill‘s New Yorker Cartoonists A-Z.

Somewhere in this house is a list of the first (vinyl) albums I bought: when I bought them, where I bought them, and how much I paid. When I got into The New Yorker it made sense to keep track of the drawings, beginning with the very first drawing sold, which, as you can see never ran. The idea was farmed out to Whitney Darrow, Jr., a seasoned New Yorker artist. His drawing based on my drawing/idea was published in the issue of December 26, 1977 (The New Yorker eventually published my original drawing online decades later in a newyorker.com post).

I thought it would be fun to look at the pages covering the years 1977 though 1979; ten drawings (including the “idea” bought) in three years. Something that I should’ve done back then was record when the drawings were bought, as well as when they were published.  All you see here is the pub date. Later on in later years I did record the actual day the OK came in.

All I know is that these ten sold and were published in these years (if I really wanted to get a fix on the sale date, I could dig out the check stubs, but that means real digging).

I’m not sure I would’ve remembered, without looking at the list, that drawing #3 was drawing #3 (which is why making lists is helpful…to me). You see it was published September 4, 1978, but I’ve no idea when I sold it.

Luckily, I did make a Key for the markings on each number. The star means the drawing was published; the red underline means I still had possession of the original drawing (not sure that that’s still the case, except for the “reliable cheese” drawing –I’ve held onto that). The blue circle was a later addition: those were drawings I was considering for inclusion in my first collection, The More The Merrier.

Drawing #7 is of particular interest to me.  I knew I’d done several sequential drawings for the magazine, but hadn’t remembered that any of them were that early.  My memory is that this drawing elicited the first editorial suggestion from then art editor, Lee Lorenz (The New Yorker never tells its contributors what to change — it suggests). I believe he suggested I add one more panel, making it a 5 part drawing rather then 4. Seemed like a good idea, so I added a fifth panel somewhere in the series. Lee’s suggestions over the years were so minimal it’s easy to remember them all (there were 4 over 20 years).

Looking at these first ten drawings published I see I was trying out situations I’d been studying for a number of years as I looked through ancient and current issues of the magazine (it’s the best education there is for aspiring cartoonists as well as veterans…a continuing education!). Living rooms, cars, dogs all make an appearance. Drawing #9 was a sign out front of a house. I’m certain I was highly influenced by seeing so many Henry Martin signage cartoons. Most of the other drawings seem caption-driven (excepting the caption-less bird series of course). I can’t exactly say that one veteran cartoonist was responsible for the captions. In a way, they were all responsible.

Finally, a nod to the little green notebook (it’s 3 1/2″ x 5″) that I filled with these New Yorker beginnings. This one lasted until December of 1988; the final drawing listed: “Mr. Huffington, the voice of Mrs. Huffington.” By then I was noting the date of the OK, as well as when the drawing was published in The New Yorker (May 8, 1989 for the Huffington cartoon). I see also that the original sold. I’m glad it found a second home.

____________________________________________________________________

Blitt On Clapton

Mr. Clapton, in the news lately, turns up in Blitt’s Kvetchbook.

__________________________________________________________

Daily Cartoonists & Cartoons

Tuesday’s Daily Cartoonist:

Snacks & rats (mice?) from Sarah Kempa.

Wednesday’s Daily Cartoonist:

Fall clothing, from Brooke Bourgeois, who began contributing to The New Yorker in 2019.