The Tilley Watch Online
An end of week listing of New Yorker artists contributing to newyorker.com features
The Daily Cartoon: Sarah Kempa, Colin Tom, Caitlin Cass, Brendan Loper, Pat Achilles, Amy Hwang.
Daily Shouts cartoonists: Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, J.A.K. (with Ginny Hogan and Alex Connolly).
…and Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook: AOC’s gown.
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Video Of Interest: Ivan Ehlers
From Pocket Comics, this video: “Behind The Strips with Ivan Ehlers”.
More reading: an article from LMU magazine (Oct 2020) published upon Mr. Ehlers selling his first New Yorker cartoon.
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A Cover Reveal: It was a decade ago that we last saw The Best Of The Rejection Collection. That edition combined material found in the original two volumes. This new “revised” edition of the 2011 version contains, according to the publisher’s pr, “20%” new material (a little birdie told me the new material is exclusively from New Yorker newbies).
Out May 3, 2022 from Workman.
The new cover (not part of the 20%?) is by the fab Kim Warp.
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James E. Kirchman Added To The A-Z
It happens. With over 600 cartoonists appearing in The New Yorker in close to 100 years, I know I’ve missed a few while researching. Just this afternoon while looking through some early 1990s issues I found a cartoon by James E. Kirchman. Then going to the magazine’s Cartoon Bank, I found another. My apologies to Mr. Kirchman for not including you ages ago on the A-Z. All told, Mr. Kirchman had two New Yorker drawings: December 9, 1991 and the one shown here, from the issue of July 11, 1994:
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Rea Irvin’s Talk Masthead: A Primer
It has been written before and it is certainly true that Harold Ross’s great invention, The New Yorker, was a work in progress from the get-go. If you need proof, just take a look at one of the magazine’s signature elements — its Talk Of The Town masthead, created by The New Yorker‘s first and only art supervisor (revisionists refer to him as “art editor,” but that “conversation” gets very weedsy…I’ll probably get around to diving into those weeds one of these days).
Below you will see how much messin’ around Ross and Irvin did with the masthead design not just within the first year, but within the first four issues and then, in the twenty-seventh issue and forty-ninth issue. After that things calmed down, graphically speaking, for quite some time.
1st issue of The New Yorker, February 21, 1925:
Above is the very first Talk of The Town masthead. An owl and a rooster, and a skyline. Not a Eustace Tilley in sight. In the same issue, the first version of a masthead featuring Eustace Tilley sits atop Of All Things.
2nd issue, February 28, 1925:
The Of All Things Eustace Tilley masthead is moved to The Talk Of The Town (but not for long!).
3rd Issue, March 7, 1925:
The Eustace Tilley Talk masthead now appears over Behind The News.
And Talk Of The Town appears with its old friends, the owl and rooster.
4th Issue, March 14, 1925:
The Eustace Tilley masthead is back atop Talk Of The Town and remains in place until the…
27th Issue, August 22, 1925:
The masthead is redrawn. This new version remains in place until the…
49th Issue, January 30, 1926:
Another Redraw. This exact masthead stays in place until the issue of…
September 8, 1980:
the so-called Irvin typeface loses its rough edges and is replaced by a sleeker version. In the process the ray of sunshine above the “R” and “K” in “Yorker” is (sadly) lost. This masthead remains unchanged until the issue of…
May 22, 2017
Rea Irvin’s art is completely abandoned in the issue of May 22, 2017. Irvin’s masterpiece (other than The New Yorker‘s very first cover) is — gasp! — redrawn by another artist. You can read all about that here.
Here’s Rea Irvin’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
Rea Irvin (pictured above. Self portrait above from Meet the Artist) Born, San Francisco, 1881; died in the Virgin Islands,1972. Irvin was the cover artist for the New Yorker’s first issue, February 21, 1925. He was the magazine’s first and only art supervisor (some refer to him as its first art editor) holding the position from 1925 until 1939 when James Geraghty assumed the title of art editor. Irvin then became art director and remained in that position until William Shawn officially succeeded Harold Ross in early 1952. Irvin’s last original work for the magazine was the magazine’s cover of July 12, 1958. The February 21, 1925 Eustace Tilley cover had been reproduced every year on the magazine’s anniversary until 1994, when R. Crumb’s Tilley-inspired cover appeared. Tilley has since reappeared, with other artists substituting from time-to-time.