The New Yorker Album of Drawings 1975-1985 Signed by Three

Evolving Lens Bookseller of Kingston offers a thrice-signed copy of The New Yorker Cartoon Album 1975-1985.

Unlike the personalized and well-decorated copy we saw here yesterday, this one has just three cartoonist signatures—belonging to Edward Koren, art editor Lee Lorenz, and Danny Shanahan—with no other scribbles. While the book certainly could have been signed at an event, it's rarity suggests to me that it's one of just a few copies signed almost at random on look day, the morning cartoonists traditionally brought their work in to show the art editor, later the cartoon editor.

But this conjecture of mine raises its own questions. Why was it signed by only three cartoonists? If it was look day, why couldn't  a dozen cartoonists represented in the collection have signed? Was the book meant for a corporate client of the magazine? Nearly forty years have passed, the book's signers are all gone, and it may be hard to find anyone who has the answers.

The book is priced at $275.

The New Yorker Cartoon Album 1975-1985
Evolving Lens Bookseller listing accessed July 10, 2024

https://www.evolvinglensbookseller.com/pages/books/17129/new-yorker-magazine-staff/the-new-yorker-cartoon-album-1975-1985

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May Smith's Copy of The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker

The Friends of Poughkeepsie Library is offering another copy of The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, this one signed by Michael Crawford, Danny Shanahan, and Peter Steiner. The recipient, May Smith must have said she fancied cats, as Shanahan and Steiner both drew felines on the half title. Crawford, though, was having none of it.

The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker
AbeBooks listing accessed April 21, 2024

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30890619438&searchurl=isbn%3D9781579123222%26sgnd%3Don%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image8

The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker
AbeBooks bibliographic details

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Gloria's Copy of The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995

On September 15, 1995, editor Tina Brown threw a launch party for Lee Lorenz's book The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995. Gloria (glorbrue on eBay), then an employee of the magazine, took the opportunity to purchase a copy and have it signed and personalized by a group of artists at the Lincoln Center event.

A minor scorch mark on the book prompted fire-related drawings from cartoonists Jack Ziegler, Danny Shanahan, and Lee Lorenz, plus a fire-quenching comment from Ed Fisher. Roz Chast contributed her own admonitory drawing to the page, while Gretchen Dow Simpson added a wistful inscription.

Meanwhile, Victoria Roberts left a disarmingly poignant emendation to the book's title. Her fanciful bird drawing prompted a mock-angry reaction from Bob Mankoff, who depicted himself packing heat and prepared to shoot. George Booth, positioning himself on the page above the fray, reacted to the gun play and the bird by having a bullet ricochet between his chickens.

Let's take a closer look. The following detail gives a better view of the drawings by Chast and Ziegler, both of which have faded over the intervening years.

Mankoff's enraged gunman has some rudimentary stippling, a hallmark of his style.

Is it a flamingo? A detail of Roberts's bird shows the somewhat meandering neck.

Booth's chickens seem unperturbed by all the action.

Shanahan and Lorenz address the burning issues of the day.

Bidding started on eBay at $250 with a buy-it-now price of $500. One low bid was all it took to seal the deal:

The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995
eBay listing ended February 7, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156036847523?epid=494627&itmmeta=01HV5JC18VPP170KGD6R6Q7PTC&hash=item24548557a3:g:3qUAAOSwMQZlunoq&itmprp

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CjwaSwdB9b2%2BDSDmyzRyQHK5jEJwWeNszrswu4wVDpAeFhEQ9Agx0mE74qIDzX7G1E8jCriIuO8AzT%2BCrd5RsPYvhLo3qHsUeAUraZCGdGBLV5bNqA5tx%2FV5B

4e5offYrCe3Q2vBIAOmBE2mY0F6aL%2FJLv%2FLYrAYpEoR72YC3449tEBEdXJE8lANMmWDxexql9JYxXq2xpwK%2B%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8CUsLLZYw

The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995
eBay item description
". . . and two signatures I can't make out. Ed Koren? Bill Hamilton?" Try Ed Fisher and Bob Mankoff.

Note:  Believe it or not, this is the fourteenth copy of this book to appear here on the blog. Many of these copies are from the signing event at Lincoln Center. I'd be pleased to post additional copies of the book signed by New Yorker cartoonists. I would also love to hear from anyone in possession of photographs taken at the event.

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The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker Signed by Four

A copy of The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (2004) is signed by cartoonistsDanny Shanahan, Liza Donnelly, Peter Steiner, and Michael Maslin. The signing was held at Merritt Books, formerly of Red Hook, New York. The book is not made out to any one recipient and was signed for the book store's inventory. It is now available from Friends of Poughkeepsie Library for $200.

The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker
AbeBooks listing accessed October 15, 2023

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30890614589&searchurl=isbn%3D9781579123222%26sgnd%3Don%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title8

Note:  This blog has previously posted one June's copy of The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker signed by these very four New Yorker cartoonists here. Call it a coincidence.

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Labor Day 2023 at The New Yorker

At The New Yorker, Labor Day 2023 looks very much like Labor Day 2001. Today's Daily Cartoon published online is by Paul Karasik:

Labor Day
Paul Karasik
Daily Cartoon, September 4, 2023

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/monday-september-4th-labor-day

This Daily resembes a color "Sketchbook" cartoon by Danny Shanahan published in the magazine back in 2001. It's not clear to me whether fact-checkers review the Daily Cartoons in search of such similarities or whether they even work on Labor Day.

"Sketchbook"
Danny Shanahan
The New Yorker, September 3, 2001, p. 65

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2001-09-03/flipbook/064/

04433

Sam Gross: Water Jugs and a Pot of Gold

This past week the cartooning world has been remembering the legendary Sam Gross, who died May 6th at the age of 89. His comprehensive filing system catalogued more than 33,800 of his cartoons at the time of his death, according to his obituary in the Times which quoted his former intern Patrick Giles. To illustrate just how big this number is, if one were to post one of his cartoons a day every day, it would take more than 92 years to get through them all. Said another way, Gross left us a cartoon for more than every day of the his life. The Instagram account (@samgrosscartoons) has only 59 posts, all of them of classic cartoons, but representing only a tiny fraction of his output. My small contribution today is to post just one obscure cartoon, a rough, sold on eBay in 2015. This gives only a hint of the sort of work that must be present in his archive.

Sam Gross
eBay listing ended October 11, 2015

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Signed-Sam-Gross-Rough-Cartoon-New-Yorker-Cartoonist-/272002344219?hash=item3f549a651b%3

Ag%3ABYsAAOSw42JWDFjF&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Sam Gross
eBay item description

Note:  Was this cartoon, or a more finished version of it, ever published? If you know, let me know.

04319

Danny Shanahan's Copy of Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell

Author Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996) and cartoonist Danny Shanahan (1956-2021) were both associated with The New Yorker, although they were from distinctly different generations and creative disciplines. No doubt there's an interesting story about how, in 1992, the young cartoonist obtained a signed copy of Up in the Old Hotel from the venerated writer, but that bit of history is probably lost to us.

Joseph Mitchell
AbeBooks listing accessed November 25, 2022

https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first-edition/Old-Hotel-SIGNED-Mitchell-Joseph-Pantheon/30651593027/bd

04150

Kiribi's Copy of The New Yorker Book of Money Cartoons

There are two distinct editions of The New Yorker Book of Money Cartoons. The first was published on November 1, 1999 at $21.95. It has an introduction by humorist Christopher Buckley. The revised and updated edition was published in 2012 at $22.95—that's not even inflationary because there are twenty-one more cartoons—with an introduction by cartoonist David Sipress. Both editions are edited by Robert Mankoff, who doesn't always go by the name Bob.

Kiribi's copy is from the original edition, the one with the cover by Michael Witte. Whatever signing event there was presumably occurred back in 1999 or possibly 2000 as part of the book launch publicity. The four cartoonists present were Liza Donnelly, Arnie Levin, Victoria Roberts, and Danny Shanahan. All four added original drawings at the signing; two of these are inspired by the book's subject matter.

Cover by Michael Witte

Signed by Arnie Levin, Victoria Roberts, Liza Donnelly, and Danny Shanahan
Dust jacket flap cartoon by Dean Vietor

Cover art by Michael Witte and Chad Covert Darbyshire

Back cover cartoons by Roz Chast and Barbara Smaller

Cartoonist David Sipress, whose work did not appear at all in the first edition—he was quite new to the magazine then—had two cartoons included in the revised and updated one, to which he wrote the introduction. He signed a copy of the book, not Kiribi's, at an unknown promotion likely circa 2012.

David Sipress's signature

The indices of artists in these two editions differ somewhat with good reason. The first edition has 110 cartoons and the revised and updated edition has 131. The first twenty-five pages of cartoons in the revised and updated edition are new here. Then the drawing by Lee Lorenz from page 1 of the 1999 edition appears on page 26 of the new edition, and from there the cartoons follow the sequence of the first edition. Four drawings that were in the first edition have been dropped: Michael Crawford's on page 65 (perhaps the Microsoft millionaires reference was thought to be less timely), two by Richard Cline on pages 16 and 78 (for whatever reason), and one by Lee Lorenz from the very last page (see the Monopoly money gag, below) who also had a different cartoon added to the very first page of the new edition. It's the circle of life.

Similar revised and updated editions were published for The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons, The New Yorker Book of Teacher Cartoons, and The New Yorker Book of Golf Cartoons. Collect them all.

Note:  Docnad's conjecture is that if something, however rare, happened to a book once, it probably happened more than once. Thus any rare volume very likely exists in several variations. For example, a copy of The New Yorker Book of Money Cartoons obligingly signed and decorated by four New Yorker cartoonists is probably not the only one out there signed by these four. (The conjecture, of course, may be expanded to include countless other groupings of New Yorker cartoonists signing myriad other Cartoon Bank collections.) The beauty of the conjecture is that it cannot easily be disproven; the nonexistence of a similar book is generally unknowable. All it takes to prove the conjecture, though, is for an enterprising individual to read this post, take a similarly signed and decorated book down off the shelf, scan or photograph the relevant page or two of original art, and forward it to this philosophizing blogger. It should really all be so simple.

03991

James Stevenson's Copy of The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995

According to eBay seller dc467 of Paramus, a very nicely signed copy of The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995 by Lee Lorenz that belonged to cartoonist James Stevenson (1929-2017) was obtained from his estate. The seller suggests the volume was "presented to" Stevenson, raising the question of whether he himself attended the book launch party at 70 Lincoln Center Plaza. Stevenson doesn't seem to have signed anybody else's book there, so it's unclear whether he was or was not actually present.

In July, the seller first offered this book for $599.99. It's an unusually high price even for a copy signed by multiple cartoonists, but the volume does come with a great provenance. The truth is, there is no absolute evidence in the book that it belonged to Stevenson, but a lot of the cartoonists addressed him as Jim and seemed familiar enough with him, so there is really no reason to doubt he was the owner. Furthermore, there are apparent inside jokes from Roz Chast, Edward Koren, Victoria Roberts, and Robert Weber, two of them referring to his hair, perhaps his facial hair. A surprising number of the cartoonists signed not on the front endpapers, as seen in several other copies, but on pages in the book alongside their individual printed cartoons. On the downside, there are not enough original drawings here; the two by George Booth and Danny Shanahan are absolute highlights of the book. 

The seller, dc467, did not accept sequential offers and counteroffers of $200, $225, and $250. Eventually, though, dc lowered the book's asking price to $350 and in late December, apparently despairing of another opportunity to sell it before Christmas, accepted a best offer of $280.

James Stevenson
eBay listing ended December 20, 2021

https://www.ebay.com/itm/203522461051?epid=0&hash=item2f62e24d7b:g:KtgAAOSwYOdg60HN

Robert Weber actually wrote, "To Tom—Jim said that I loved your sculptures, too. Robert Weber."
The unidentified signature on the back endpaper belongs to George Plimpton.
James Stevenson
eBay item description

Sold for best offer of $280

"To Jim
Very best wishes
George Plimpton"

Included is Stevenson's clipping of Ben Yagoda's review of The Art of The New Yorker 1925-1995 in the Times Book Review. I posted this five years ago without the Thurber drawing, so here it is again, this time complete:

Note:  Believe it or not, this is the eleventh unique copy of this book to appear here on the blog and the second originally belonging to a New Yorker cartoonist. I still have two more copies on deck, but I'm sure there are far more worth posting. 

So here's the deal, in a nutshell: You scour your personal library, or a friend's library, for a copy of this book, or really of any book, with at the very least an original drawing or inscription by a New Yorker artist, take scans of photos of the critical pages, and forward such to me. I do the rest, and soon interested parties everywhere get to see and enjoy your images.

03912