My Copy of Very Funny Ladies by Liza Donnelly

Freshly arrived his week from Oblong Books of Rhinebeck is a signed and personalized copy of Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Women Cartoonists. This book is Liza Donnelly's brand new update of Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons (2005). The half title page is embellished with a festive drawing. 

Note:  Copies of Very Funny Ladies signed by Liza Donnelly remain available from Oblong Books here.

03887

Liza Donnelly: Funny Ladies and Very Funny Ladies

A year ago I wondered to myself whether I could resist buying a signed copy of Liza Donnelly's Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons (2005)? Certainly not, and I already owned one.

But it is now time for that classic history to cede its authority to Ms. Donnelly's new and updated Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Women Cartoonists. The book is being launched tonight at 7 p.m. EST via Zoom. You can still register for the free event here and order a signed copy from Oblong Books here. I'm not hesitating, so why should you?

So, that taken care of, you may now get back to the original book and ask me, how does one come to buy a second signed copy of Funny Ladies? Well, just take a look at what arrives via email soon after one happens to glance innocently at a copy on eBay:

So then, one thinks, $27.95 is still a lot for a second copy of this book which is, after all, about to be updated. So one makes a shrewd if impractical counteroffer of $25 which the less shrewd but more practical seller accepts. So then one is all set for life with two signed copies until a year later when the updated edition, now called Very Funny Ladies, comes out, leading one to conclude that ordering a new signed copy wouldn't really count as a third one because now it's a different book. Got it?

Here then is the rest of the 2005 edition as listed on eBay in 2021:

Liza Donnelly
eBay listing accessed March 21, 2021

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284218009085?ul_noapp=true

Liza Donnelly
eBay item description

03576

Barbara Shermund: Not Abnormal

Three years into the New Yorker's run, the single-panel gag cartoon had been completely reimagined. Barbara Shermund's sumptuous original art from 1928, offered for sale in 2014 by Carlson & Stevenson, carries the caption "I don't think he's abnormal—he's just versatile." In her history Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons (2005), Liza Donnelly writes of this cartoon, "...the caption can be read two ways, straight or gay..." (p. 59).

"I don't think he's abnormal—he's just versatile."
Barbara Shermund
Original art
The New Yorker, July 21, 1928, page 12

In publishing such a smartly ambiguous cartoon caption, was the New Yorker now on its own atop the teeming world of humor magazines? It certainly seems so. Already the young upstart of a magazine had no equal in nuance. How did it happen so quickly that the New Yorker came to find its voice and allow an unknown artist like Barbara Shermund to find hers?

Carlson & Stevenson

Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, & Antique Show Catalog 2014 

Published on Jan 22, 2014 page 53

https://issuu.com/palmbeachshowgroup/docs/palm_beach_show_catalogue_2014

Carlson & Stevenson

Palm Beach Jewelry, Art, & Antique Show Catalog 2014 

Published on Jan 22, 2014 page 53

https://issuu.com/palmbeachshowgroup/docs/palm_beach_show_catalogue_2014

Cartoons by Barbara Shermund and C. W. Anderson

https://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1928-07-21#folio=012

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Barbara Shermund

Liza Donnelly

Original New Yorker Cartoon Art

Attempted Bloggery's Straight-as-an-Arrow Index

 02762

Funny Ladies Signed by Liza Donnelly

The cover of Liza Donnelly's Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons (2005) depicts a half dozen female cartoonists dressed as The New Yorker's mascot Eustace Tilley. This copy was purchased on the second day of the MoCCA Arts Festival 2016. It was spotted at the table of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and contains a signed drawing of a funny lady who again happens to be dressed as Eustace Tilley.

Liza Donnelly
Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons, 2005

Signed by Liza Donnelly with a drawing of a funny lady

Note:  Which is correct, women cartoonists or woman cartoonists? Or should we just avoid using a noun to modify another noun? We would probably never say men cartoonists or, even worse, man cartoonists, would we? We would call them male cartoonists. But what about boy cartoonists...?

Attempted Bloggery's quick links:

The MoCCA Arts Festival

Signed Books with Original Drawings

Liza Donnelly

Eustace Tilley

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

Attempted Bloggery's Funny and Feminine Index

02028