Closing in on the end of a seemingly long double-issue two weeks — a new issue will come out next Monday — I thought it would be fun to try out a new addition to the Spill: First & Last.
It’s been an interest of mine, when thinking about certain New Yorker artists, to automatically look into what their first New Yorker drawing was, and when it appeared. If they’ve recently passed away (such as the case with Bill Woodman last weekend), or have been out of the magazine for a while, I’ll look up their last drawing. My guess as to what takes me to the extremes is just that: the first published is, for every cartoonist, a Big Deal. It’s a huge moment. The last drawing is more complicated; sometimes we do know, but mostly we don’t why it was the last.
A big mystery will always be the stories behind the approximately 80 or so One Clubbers who’ve contributed to he magazine (One Clubbers are the artists whose work appeared just once in The New Yorker in their lifetime). A One Clubber’s first and last drawing is the same drawing.
After looking up the first and last drawing of any given New Yorker artist, I often take a longer look into their body of work, trying to get to know the artist better.
An artist whose work I’ve long been familiar with is Otto Soglow, a contributor from the magazine’s earliest days — his first cartoon appeared in the issue of November 14, 1925. For those familiar with Soglow’s work, particularly his Little King, that first drawing, shown here, may come as a surprise.
This is not the later Soglow look of a simple line drawing, but a heavy, dense graphic. You can barely see the people on the page. For a good quick summary of the changes Soglow’s work went through, try Cartoon Monarch: Otto Soglow & The Little King ((IDW, 2012), specifically pages 16-17.
The other day I sat down with an early 1970s bound volume of New Yorkers, April-May of 1972 to be exact, and was up to the April 29th issue when seeing the below line up of contributors in the Table Of Contents halted my forward motion.
While I’ve long been aware that Soglow passed away in the early 1970s, I didn’t recall seeing his work in the magazine when I was full steam ahead studying every issue. It was wonderful seeing his name listed alongside of Edward Koren’s, Charles Barsotti’s, Edward Frascino’s, and George Booth’s — artists I associate with the early afternoon of modern times at the magazine (the dawn was, I think, in the late 1950s early ’60s, with the arrival of the wave that included Lee Lorenz, Warren Miller, and Robert Weber).
The April 29th Soglow was not his last drawing, but was certainly in his winding down period at the magazine. Following the April 29th cartoon was a drawing in the issue of October 14, 1972, then the issues of May 12, 1973, and December 31, 1973. His last New Yorker drawing, shown below, appeared in the issue of November 4, 1974. He passed away in April of 1975.
In between his first and last drawing were 821 more, in a New Yorker career lasting 49 years. His passing was noted in The New York Times, and in The New Yorker issue of April 28, 1975. Here’s what William Shawn wrote: 