I'm a bit late with this, I know. It's been more than two years since I offered a peek at
The New Yorker Cartoons of the Year 2012. I didn't even mention the 2013 edition, and for good reason. It contained an article by
Robert Mankoff himself on "How to 'Win' the
New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest." I certainly wasn't going to share those secrets with you people. But then it turns out the word
Win was in quotation marks, just like my losing captions....
Now it's 2014--well, 2015 in most time zones--so we have a new edition of the collection to add to our libraries. Once again, the 2014 edition is included free in the
New Yorker iPad subscription, which does little to explain why I bought myself a print copy in Barnes & Noble. Let's just say I'm a very insecure individual.
The cover features a striking cartoon by
J. C. Duffy with an awful lot of black ink, yet it's printed in every color of the rainbow. The banner is particularly eye-catching in red. "New Cartoons!" it screams. "New Features!! New Exclamation Points!!!" "I'll take it," I said to the cashier at Barnes & Noble. Did I really have a choice?
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The New Yorker Cartoons of the Year 2014
Cartoon by J. C. Duffy |
Twenty features are listed in the table of contents. Those without by-lines are sections with collected cartoons from the magazine. In my own personal stylebook, the one time it's okay to use the misspelling Alright is when referring to the Who's "The Kids Are Alright." The New Yorker knows better. It's apparently never okay.
The cartoonists represented in this year's edition:
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| Avi Steinberg, "Oh, it always starts politely." |
No one is better at explicating the workings of a cartoon than Paul Karasik. Here he looks at a Charles Addams classic:
The section on cat and dog cartoons is led by Paul Noth:
Alen MacWeeney's photographs are collected in a useful feature to help you spot cartoonists in your travels. After all, you don't want to miss a New Yorker cartoonist sitting across from you on the subway. So, can you guess who this cartoonist is?
Michael Maslin explains what you need to know about the Western cartoon in "Why Out West?" Good title.
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"Why Out West?" by Michael Maslin
Cartoon by Barbara Shermund |
Where would
New Yorker cartoons be without politicians? They practically ridicule themselves.
Robert Mankoff tallies up the votes on "The 10 Best Caption Contests." I don't want to talk about it.
Remembering Charles Barsotti:
Note: It's
Michael Crawford! Say hi if you run into him.
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| Alen MacWeeney, Michael Crawford |
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Self Portrait with a Hole in the Head
Michael Crawford
Oil on palette
Image added August 4, 2015
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My post on
The New Yorker Cartoons of the Year 2012 is very nearly worth a trip into the archives.
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