I don't know who Sean may be, but his copy of The New Yorker Book of BusinessCartoons (1998) was quite special. It was sold on eBay on September 11. The dust jacket art is by Michael Witte.
The unique feature of the book is the front free endpaper, which has drawings by five New Yorker cartoonists: Arnie Levin, Mick Stevens, Peter Steiner, Roz Chast, and Bob Mankoff. The cartoon census is one dog, one snake, one cat, and two human males. Through Stevens's signature, we learn that this assemblage dates to 1999, the year after publication.
Title page
Facing cartoons by Danny Shanahan and James Stevenson
Cartoons by Tom Cheney and Donald Reilly
Cartoons by Jack Ziegler and, again, Stevenson
A cartoon by Bernard Schoenbaum and the roster of cartoonists in the book
Back cover cartoon by Lee Lorenz
The New Yorker Book of Business Cartoons eBay listing ended September 11, 2025
The New Yorker Book of Business Cartoons eBay item description
Note: I'm just a simple blogger who would like to post other endpaper drawings by other New Yorker cartoonists in other New Yorker books of this ilk. See what you can do.
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
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
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.
Bidding opened at $20,000 with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. The day prior to yesterday's auction, no bids had been placed.
But as always the iconic drawing received a lot of publicity. It was on the cover of the Heritage catalogue:
Not surprisingly, it was the most viewed lot from the Illustration Art sale on the website.
When the hammer dropped yesterday, the bidding had reached $140,000 plus a $35,000 buyer's premium. That's a higher realized price by far than any work of original New Yorker art yet documented on this blog. My guess—and it's just a guess—is that the competing bidders were, for the most part, not the usual cartoon and illustration collectors, but tech millionaires competing to claim a cultural touchstone of the internet age.
In 1993, the internet was always capitalized.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Peter Steiner The New Yorker, July 5, 1993, p. 61
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Peter Steiner Original art The New Yorker, July 5, 1993, p. 61
A spot drawing by Benoît van Innis and a cartoon by Peter Steiner
Heritage arranged a discussion of the cartoon with the artist and Bob Mankoff,The New Yorker's former cartoon editor (who was not the one to buy the cartoon for the magazine—that was Lee Lorenz) but had much to do with licensing it.
Yes, this cartoon has its own Wikipedia page! Here's an audio version of it recorded four years ago preserving the content as it then appeared:
Meanwhile, that other drawing in the magazine's spread, of an unlaced shoe, is quite forgotten by history. I doubt that many remember this or any spot drawing for that matter . . .
Shoe spot Benoît van Innis
Note: There was also a redraw by Peter Steiner of his classic cartoon available from Curated Cartoons for $1,500. It sold within an hour of the Heritage lot. You can see that this redraw is pretty close, but it's by no means identical to the published version. See the treatment of the windows across the street, for example.
The Purple Pussycat Boutique, Roz Chast's fictitious sex shop, is based on the Pink Pussycat Boutique located on West 4th Street in the Village. The gag in which the store appeared was published in The New Yorker of February 9, 1998, when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal was making headlines. The drawing was part of an unusual two-page cartoon feature with multiple contributors called "Further Revelations."
The original art was sold by the Cartoon Bank in August of 2000 with a stated valuation of $1,200. It was first offered on eBay in November of 2020. The asking price was $1,500 in April of 2021, but it subsequently came down to $1,100. It sold in August 2021 for an undisclosed best offer. Comparison of the original art with the published cartoon reveals that the magazine corrected the placement of the apostrophe in Presidents' Day.
Roz Chast Original art The New Yorker, February 9, 1998, page 71
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