Some New Yorker Cartoon Go-Tos
There are a number of New Yorker collections I go-to more than others. This doesn’t mean I won’t occasionally visit the earliest “Albums,” but on a day-to-day basis the above get the most attention. The exceptions (always exceptions) are the three Yearbooks (2007, 2008, 2009). I like having those close to where I work because they’re so different than all the other Albums. The attraction for me was (and remains) that they’re the same size as the Albums, and hardcover.
Above the Yearbooks is a real workhorse: The Complete New Yorker. It’s the source of the “database” I often refer to on the Spill. Unfortunately, the discs within do not play on modern computers (as I’ve mentioned before on this site, I bought an old computer specifically dedicated to accessing the database discs).
The albums above The Complete New Yorker are so great for capsule visits to particular periods of the magazine’s history. There’s repetition of course, as each reaches back to 1925. But that’s okay (we are what we’ve published).
You might notice that there’s a lack of modern Albums. The giant collection, The Complete Cartoons Of The New Yorker (2004) is simply too unwieldy, too heavy. Perhaps having a dedicated surface for it would be a good idea (like those carts some folks have for the massive Webster dictionaries). The paperback version, published two years later, is handier. The New Yorker 75th Anniversary Cartoon Collection always gets lost in the sauce around here — not sure why. When I want to look at modern cartoons I usually go to the the magazine’s Cartoon Bank site and plug in the cartoonist of interest.