In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #993 from the issue of June 8, 2026, three pigs are seated at a trough in a restaurant looking at the menus. The one on the left is speaking. My submission is shown below. The drawing is by Avi Steinberg.
"Could you explain for my brothers the advantages of having a brick oven?"
These captions weren't quite good enough for me to serve up:
"Is the slop fresh?" "I don't suppose the catch of the day is wolf?" "It appears the house specialty is bacon."
An original spot drawing of a girl sitting on horseback by Madeline author and artist Ludwig Bemelmans was published in The New Yorker in May of 1961. The art was framed in-house, apparently, and became part of the collection of writers Neil and Susan Sheehan. As a writer for the magazine, Susan Sheehan must have had access to a very nice selection of original art. This piece was sold on May 15 by Second Story Books.
Ludwig Bemelmans Framed original spot drawing The New Yorker,May 13,1961, p. 161
Another original New Yorker cartoon by William Steig, this one from 1969, was sold by Second Story Books on May 17. It had been collected by Neil and Susan Sheehan, she a writer for the magazine. One imagines they both appreciated the singular perspective on marriage the artist expressed in this drawing.
William Steig Original art The New Yorker, November 22, 1969, p. 57
The Motion Picture Association of America introduced its voluntary film rating system in November of 1968. The four original ratings were G (for general audiences), M (for mature audiences), R (restricted, persons under age 16 not admitted without a parent or guardian), and X (those under 16 not admitted). Edward Koren's cartoon, on the page opposite the Steig, provides the artist's take on the new ratings one year in.
In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #992 from the issue of June 1, 2026, two rats stand outside of a laboratory maze. The rat who is speaking opens a jewelry case to reveal an engagement ring. My submission is shown below. The drawing is by Benjamin Slyngstad, whose work is new to me.
In the CartoonStock Caption Contest number 206, a man with an apple obscuring his face right out of a René Magritte painting is being wed in church to a woman with a fruit basket on her head à laCarmen Miranda. The cartoonist is Felipe Galindo, but his proper married name is Feggo.
Dearly beloved, this time around the rules of the monthly cash prize contest have changed: Five dollars will still buy up to three entries but now three additional dollars can optionally buy a fourth entry, and so forth ad infinitum. Real cash prizes are fifty percent of the total prize pool (previously $500) for first place and ten percent of the prize pool (previously $100) for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $255 into the first fifty-one pay-to-play contests and this fifty-second challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $260. Having achieved runner-up status with three previous entries, I've collected $300 from CartoonStock, so I'm still playing with the house's money, thank you very much. The contest, though, is no longer subsidized by cash from the vast coffers of CartoonStock, making the contest's odds less favorable, I would think. To be sure, the odds may still be generally considered favorable if enough people feel inclined to pay $3 for additional entries, especially ill-considered ones, or if an entrant is generally superior at this captioning game than the average contestant.
Here's how the prize pool accumulated over time:
The prize pool as of May 11, 2026
The Prize Pool as of May 24, 2026
The Prize Pool as of May 25, 2026 before I purchased my entries
To my surprise, the full $5 entry fee was credited to the prize pool, not a percentage with fees removed. Therefore, I have no idea where the odd pennies in the pool are coming from. I would think the pool would be a sum of $5 and $3 entry fees, with no pennies.
The Prize Pool as of May 25, 2026 after I purchased my entries
If the prize pool comes to exceed $1,000, the potential take would then be greater than in previous contests.
My three entries this round are unveiled below:
"They found true love at a farmers' market." "May you kiss the bride?" "And do you promise to avoid food fights?"
June 7, 2026 Update: The Winner
Magritte's painting Le fils de l'homme (1964) is known as The Son of Man in the English-speaking world.
The Judges Deliberate
Of the judges, only the cartoonist Feggo had the good sense to choose one of my captions for his top ten. He listed it at no. 9. I'll take it. Lawrence Wood still wouldn't deign to mention it in his commentary:
As noted by Victor in the comments below, the final prize pool came to $933.22, not too far down from the old $1,000 prize before CartoonStock complicated everything with its cost-cutting. At the beginning of the video, Trevor Hoey confirms that the odd 22 cents came about as a result of foreign exchange rates.
In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #991 from the issue of May 25, 2026, a castle is under siege. One of the warriors, sword in hand, does a ballet leap above the battle. Up in the turret, one of the castle's defenders speaks. My submission is shown below. The drawing is by Hartley Lin.
"That's another way to keep above the fray."
I don't think this one quite works:
"They said to prepare for battle, but he's dyslexic."
A 1970 New Yorker cartoon original by the great William Steig remained in the collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan for well over five decades, it seems. Then, along with a few other Steig drawings of theirs, it appeared suddenly on the market last weekend and was sold within twenty-four hours. At least we got to see it before it passed back into obscurity.
William Steig Framed, original art The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20
Careful readers may have noticed that this week's posts include no fewer than three Steig drawings featuring disembodied heads. Coincidence? Not exactly. Yesterday's post was a variation on this same theme as Steig worked through the idea in his New Yorker submissions. As for Tuesday's post with that knight raising the severed head, well, these things happen.
Oh, yes. Here's how today's drawing looked in The New Yorker:
William Steig The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20
William Steig Framed, original art The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20
It can be no accident that the simple, direct contours of the emotionally overwrought Steig drawing are contrasted on the page opposite with the lush tones and genteel manner of the cartoon by Charles Saxon, who here is conscripted to play superego to Steig's id, if you will.
"It seems to me that you've simply got to be for or against sex these days." Charles Saxon The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 21
So there you have it: a cartoon depicting surreal, raw anger and one with politicized, unsexy talk of sex, both spanning a single spread in The New Yorker back in January of 1970.
By the way, I don't recall any other New Yorker artist so casually having his character self-decapitate as Steig has done here. For that matter, who else has resorted to this Saxon trick of placing a face at a dinner party between the candles in a candelabra? For the cartoonists, it's all about the faces.
Ah, there are such riches to be found in these back issues.
From the collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan comes an imaginative and absurd New Yorker drawing by William Steig. Published in 1969, the drawing was listed online this past weekend by Second Story Books and was promptly sold.
William Steig Original art The New Yorker, November 8, 1969, p. 167
The original art has sustained considerable toning, but the image appears forever young on the pages of the magazine. Not the same can be said for Steig's couple.
William Steig The New Yorker, November 8, 1969, p. 167
William Steig Original art The New Yorker, November 8, 1969, p. 167
With a spot drawing by Mario Micossi and a cartoon by William Steig
Note: For those who remember William Steig chiefly as the creator of Shrek!, that children's book wasn't published until 1990, twenty-one years after this drawing.
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