Pollux writes:

Double issue of Sempé Fi today. Now we’re going to look at Ivan Brunetti’s cover for the May 31, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. It’s called “Union Square,” and depicts this New York landmark crowded with Brunetti’s typically diminutive, big-headed figures (Brunetti’s covers are easily recognizable). Even Henry Kirke Brown’s 1856 equestrian statue of George Washington is re-imagined in Brunettian form.

Union Square is usually the focal point for political protests. Brunetti’s Union Square has many people, but only of them can be described as a protestor: she wars a bandanna and holds a sign calling for the ban of something. (continued)

Pollux writes:

“Parents groan about the ‘boomerang’ generation,” Gerald Handel and Gail G. Whitchurch write in The Psychosocial Interior of the Family, “young adults who return to the nest and stay beyond the time when, in years past, they would have been expected to be independent. Parents send their kids out, but they keep coming back.”

And certainly the parents featured on Daniel Clowes’ cover for the May 24, 2010 issue of The New Yorker look dismayed to see the return of their adult son. Clowes’ cover, called “Boomerang Generation,” refers to a social phenomenon of our time: grown children, often college graduates, who are retying the apron strings. (continued)