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Friday Afternoon Guest Post: Cartoonists Under the Microscope
Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: Bob Mankoff, Bruce Eric Kaplan, cartoons, Glen Baxter, Matthew Diffee, Richard Cline, Roz Chast, Sam Gross
Martin Schneider, our trusty Squib Reporter, writes:
Peter Carlson of The Washington Post looks at the selection process for New Yorker cartoons. (I should have remembered Emily's mention of it; in any case, Kottke jogged my memory.) Like everything else about The New Yorker, it seems to boil down to an emphasis on quality while policing the boundaries of good taste.
New Yorker cartoons stand for something in a way that not even the magazine itself always does. Speaking only of public perception here, I think they stand for a certain kind of ineffable gnomic brilliance—that's if you like them. If you don't, they're all incomprehensible non-jokes in which people who look too much like Dick Cavett make non-quips about Connecticut—hey, we've all been there. I think somehow Richard Cline got singled out as representing the insularity of the magazine's cartoon culture, which is unfair both to Cline and the rest of the diverse cartoonists (think of Glen Baxter, for one).
Cartoonists mentioned: Roz Chast, Matthew Diffee, Bruce Eric Kaplan (BEK), Sam Gross—indeed, we "see" the editors evaluate a new one of Chast's. The piece even comes with a cartoon by Mankoff of the selection process! Surely a first. We may need to hold a caption contest or call to arms the Radosh street team.
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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
Ah, the requisite "indeed"! :)
Personally, I don't see what's so incomprehensible! However, I did show my "Take my coffee, it's worth $5" cartoon to Kosta, the manager of my local diner (he likes to keep up with my successes), and this conversation ensued:
- So, this guy, he's a rich fellow.
- I guess so.
- And this other guy, he's a bum, he has no home, he lives on the street.
- Uhuh...
- And the rich guy is giving him his coffee.
- Yes.
- Nice guy. Very nice.
And that was that. I begin to think there are people who get cartoons, and people who just don't. My mother, for example, never ever EVER gets cartoons. Not unless they're really crude, mean, and in bad taste, of the NY Post type. Go figure!