For its eighty-fifth anniversary double issue of February 15 and 22, 2010, The New Yorker published not the classic Eustace Tilley image but four different new covers. The idea was that this quartet of covers—by Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, and Ivan Brunetti—when arranged in a certain rectangle, would form a graphic tribute of sorts to the classic Rea Irvin cover of the magazine's very first issue, the one that used to be run annually until the magazine's editors thought they could do better. The four covers might sound like a neat idea, almost, until you actually look at them next to that first New Yorker cover and try to make sense of the hodgepodge.
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| Rea Irvin The New Yorker, February 21, 1925 |
Chris Ware's cover (at the top left), entitled "Natural Selection," depicts Irvin (looking a bit like W. C. Fields) in his studio trying to decide what bug or other creature to place on the far side of Tilley's monocle. We are made witness to the precise moment when inspiration strikes him.
Ware's preliminary—very preliminary?—sketch for this cover was auctioned at Sotheby's Paris in the Bande Dessinée sale of 2016. The jaw-dropping presale estimate of 15,000 to 18,000 Euros was justified, some might say, when the work sold for the hammer price of 16,250.
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| Chris Ware Sotheby's Paris Bande Dessinée, May 14, 2016, lot 255 |
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| https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2010-02-15/flipbook/CV1/ |
Detail of the prop top hat and coat:
Realized price:
The other 2010 covers:
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| "Adaptation" Adrian Tomine |
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| "Survival of the Fittest" Dan Clowes |
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"Biodiversity" Ivan Brunetti |
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