Tuesday, December 9, 2025

The CartoonStock Cartoon Caption Contest No. 200

In the CartoonStock Caption Contest number 200, a family relaxes at home. Each family member is armed, as are the pets and even the houseplant. The father speaks.



The rules of the monthly cash prize contest have not changed: Five dollars buys up to three entries. Real cash prizes are $500 for first place and $100 for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $225 into the first forty-five pay-to-play contests and this forty-sixth challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $230. Having achieved runner-up status with three previous entries, I've collected $300 from CartoonStock, so I'm playing with the house's money, thank you very much. In fact, so few contestants enter that the odds may generally be considered favorable even for less-gifted caption writers. My three entries this round are shown below, above the break. The cartoonist is Liam Francis Walsh.
"I'd say we're ready for our Christmas card photo."
"What do you say we leave the doors unlocked?"
"Now how are we doing on butter?"
* * *
"The boy reads too many comics."
"I love our nuclear family."
"I always say, you can't have too much of a good thing."
"Here we are, the Johnson Family, locked and loaded."
"I love the Second Amendment—and our family."
"I told you I'd give you security."
"Feel safe?"
"What do you say we stand our ground today?"
"The bad guys wouldn't dare."









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Monday, December 8, 2025

My Entry in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #971

In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #971 from the issue of December 8, 2025, a lumberjack with a chainsaw has just cut off the top of a tree. The angry tree speaks. My entry appears below. The drawing is by Richard Sparks.

"I happen to know you're not from the Sierra Club."



These captions didn't stand tall:

"You do realize I once worked for Disney."
"You're way out of your depth."
"That's how you see yourself—just a hobbyist?"





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Sunday, December 7, 2025

Annals of Captioning: Hunting for The New Yorker in Print

My ascension to New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest finalist in Contest #969 this week has left me in the unaccustomed position of not having enough print copies of the current issue on hand. I have my subscription copy, of course, but the December 8 New Yorker is the very first time my name has appeared in the magazine and it couldn't hurt to buy a few extra copies, even at $9.99 apiece.


On Saturday, I headed for the Barnes & Noble on 3rd Avenue, figuring that store would be well stocked with magazines. And it was, though nothing like a few years ago when the place was housed in larger quarters on 86th Street. Still, the bookstore was stocked with about a dozen copies of The New Yorker right in front of the magazine section, appropriately, and at eye level. The problem was, only last week's issue was available, that of December 1, which should have been replaced Monday with the current one. 


Alas, there were no other options readily available. Street newsstands these days have only a few newspapers to sell, and old awnings advertise magazines for stores which now carry vaping supplies instead. You can still buy magazines in the greatest city in the world, but it isn't necessarily easy.



Note:  The current contest closes tonight at 11:59 p.m. Interested readers can vote for a favorite caption here. 



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Saturday, December 6, 2025

David Levine: Marcel Proust

Yesterday, I came to the end of Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterwork Remembrance of Things Past, as I still tend to call it. Nevertheless, by the last book it seems clear that In Search of Lost Time is truly a better and more meaningful translation of the title. So today I celebrate the author of this longest of novels about whom so much has been written. At least two essays on his work appeared in The New York Review of Books of January 9, 1964, and April 6, 2006. Four decades apart, both were illustrated with the same caricature by David Levine, dated 1963. It shows a weakened if not bedridden Proust raising a cup of steaming hot tea, smelling its essence, and, behind glassy eyes, no doubt recalling and reinterpreting some aspect of the life he has lived. 


I think it is an extraordinary drawing, capturing Proust in a setting we have all read about but haven't been able to actually see. The original art was sold Thursday in Swann Galleries's Illustration Art sale. Its estimate before the sale was $500 to $700, but understandably there was quite a lot of bidder interest in the piece.
David Levine
Swann Galleries Illustration Art sale of December 4, 2025

David Levine
Swann Galleries Illustration Art item description





Note:  My reading is now moving on to Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, whom I'm quite certain David Levine never drew.




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Friday, December 5, 2025

Eldon Dedini: Season in the Sun

Out of the Playboy Archives comes an original color cartoon by Eldon Dedini. It was published in the issue of December 1970. Set, one assumes, in Los Angeles at a swimming pool overlooking the Valley, it offers a stunning view.

"I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow."
Eldon Dedini
Original art
Playboy, December 1970


Caption and Eldon Dedini's signature
Playboy, December 1970

The piece was sold by Julien's Auctions of Gardena on August 26. The presale estimate was $800 to $1,200.
Eldon Dedini
Julien's Auctions listing for August 26, 2025


Eldon Dedini
Julien's Auctions item description



The published cartoon looks similar to the artwork:

"I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow."
Eldon Dedini
Playboy, December 1970

"I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow."
Eldon Dedini
Original art
Playboy, December 1970







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Thursday, December 4, 2025

Ronald Searle: Holidays Artist and Model

A 1989 ink drawing (with just a little bit of colored pencil) by Ronald Searle celebrates Santa's eye for the arts. The original work from the collection of Irvin Greif was sold last month in the Illustration Art sale at Heritage Auctions.


Searle's ink technique is dazzling, as always. Santa's brushwork may be in the same league:




More than sixteen hours before the sale, the bidding was at $725. The auction house's estimate was $1,500 and up. Whatever became of having a high estimate too?

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale


Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions item description





In the live bidding, the low estimate was met and exceeded.






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Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Ronald Searle: A Beefeater Is Served

In a 1996 Ronald Searle ink and watercolor drawing, we see a beefeater in a restaurant being served dinner by a bull. The meal is not very filling and not very beefy and he is not very happy. A pencil notation on the front of the artwork indicate that it is one of two drawings made for a Town and Country article on London restaurants. It was sold last month at Heritage Auctions in the  Illustration Art sale.


Searle's art is always better viewed full size:


On the back of the original is an unfinished ink drawing over pencil that was never erased. It depicts a well-to-do man in period attire being attacked by hungry books with cartoon eyeballs and sharp teeth. It's intriguing.

The bidding was strong some sixteen hours before the sale, with a solid $3,100 bid ($3,875 with the premium).

Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale




Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions item description

But the price was to go still higher in the illustration art sale during the live bidding:



Note:  Was this beefeater illustration actually published? Was the drawing of the dandy attacked by books ever finished? If you have access to print images of either of these, please get in touch.






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Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Ronald Searle: One-Armed Bandit

Ronald Searle's drawing of a gambler joylessly working a slot machine is from the pictorial "Las Vegas: Home on the Range." It appeared in Holiday magazine's issue of June 1960. The original 65-year-old art was sold four weeks ago at Heritage Auctions.



The online presale activity was enthusiastic, bringing the bid price up to $5,200 just thirteen hours before the sale. 


But the bidding went no further.
Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions listing ended November 4, 2025


Ronald Searle
Heritage Auctions item description





The drawing, as originally published in Holiday:

Ronald Searle
"Las Vegas:  Home on the Range"
Holiday, June, 1960, p. 89


It took up a full page in the oversize magazine:

The article is listed in the table of contents as starting on page 88:



Note:  For further reading and pictures, see Perpetua, the Ronald Searle Tribute blog created by Matt Jones—specifically the post called "Gamblin' Towns."




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Monday, December 1, 2025

My Entry in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #970

In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #970 from the issue of December 1, 2025, the setting is a library (or maybe a bookstore). A librarian with a cart is talking to a woman in the Psychology section while they look at the Grim Reaper browsing nearby in the Self-Help section. The librarian speaks. My entry appears below. The drawing is by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell.

"I'll start wheezing and lead him to the travel section."




These captions needed to be shelved:

"Why shouldn't he want to work more efficiently?"
"He'll never find anything to replace chess."
"I wouldn't mind some new life goals."
"He should be working on his people skills."




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Sunday, November 30, 2025

Bill Bush's Copy of The Dedini Gallery

A copy of The Dedini Gallery, Eldon Dedini's 1961 cartoon collection, is signed and inscribed, "Greetings, Bill!" by the artist. This Bill, we are told, is Houston-area comics collector William "Bill" Bush, Jr., who passed away in 2013. We were also told that he had been working on a history of early comic artists, one I don't think was completed or published. The Dedini book was discounted 25% by Texas-based eBay seller Space Cadets Collection for this weekend only and was sold thus.





Eldon Dedini
eBay listing accessed November 28, 2025

Eldon Dedini
eBay item description


Sold!








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