Art Spiegelman: Raw 3 Call for Submissions—Enticing Jules Feiffer

Back in 1991, Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly were actively trying to recruit cartoonist Jules Feiffer to create comic pages that would appear in their magazine, Raw 3.

This, apparently, was not their first attempt. Raw was now in its second series and this third issue would prove to be its last. Feiffer never would appear in the magazine. Was he tempted by Spiegelman's drawing of himself and his wife humorously discussing Feiffer? Surely, he must have been tickled. The cartoon is at the bottom of the call for submissions. It shows Spiegelman and Mouly just as they were depicted in Maus, the renowned graphic novel first serialized in Raw. When Feiffer decided to sell this original work at Swann Auction Galleries in 2024, he commented only about his regard for Spiegelman and Mouly, not about his failure to appear in their publication. But perhaps Spiegelman has given us the answer. The dialogue conveys how busy Feiffer was with the variety of creative projects he was taking on.

Art Spiegelman
Swann Auction Galleries listing of June 20, 2024

https://www.swanngalleries.com/auction-lot/_42945E9B36

Art Spiegelman
Swann Auction Galleries item description

The piece, which sold for $3,250 (buyer's premium included), has now resurfaced on AbeBooks. It is offered by Raptis Rare Books of Palm Beach for $7,500. A second chance, if you will.

Art Spiegelman
AbeBooks listing accessed May 10, 2026

https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first-edition/Raw-Magazine-Call-Submissions-Print-Personalized/32203670085/bd

Art Spiegelman
AbeBooks item description

05263

Six Cartoon Publications, Mostly Signed

An ebay listing offered six publications, four of them cartoon-rich editions from The New Yorker, one New Yorker magazine, and one New York University Bulletin. The bulletin, magazine, and bookazines date from 2010 to 2015. In five of them, either Roz Chast, Matthew Diffee, or Jules Feiffer signed next to or on their own artwork in print. It's the kind of collection that would be nearly impossible to assemble today if it weren't already there for the taking. Yet it proved difficult to sell.

Of the six publications, the NYU Bulletin is probably the hardest to find, but there can't be much demand:

Jules Feiffer (1929-2025) signed his Bulletin cover.

Roz Chast signed her cartoon in the October 3, 2011, issue of The New Yorker—not a cartoon-themed issue—and a page from, probably, the magazine's 2011 cartoon calendar.

A Sam Gross rabbit cartoon was on the cover of the New Yorker Cartoons of the Year for 2011.

And Matthew Diffee signed his cartoon on page 4.

The New Yorker Cartoons of the Year 2014 has a dog cartoon by J. C. Duffy on the cover.

Matt Diffee signs on page 11.

The New Yorker 90th Anniversary Book of Cartoons surely deserved to be hardbound, but it was published as a bookazine. The bookazine cover art was adapted from Barry Blitt's 2015 anniversary magazine cover which had nine, not eight, modern-day Eustace Tilleys.

Again, Matthew Diffee was good enough to sign his Che Guevara cartoon on page 118.

The back covers:

Six assorted signed cartoon volumes
eBay listing accessed September 21, 2025

https://www.ebay.com/itm/285601622932?_skw=signed+Yorker&itmmeta=01K5QNXCMX5R18PN804RFGDKB3&hash=item427f2eeb94:g:~wkAAOSwDDNlbUaB&itmprp=enc%3AAQAKAAAA0FkggFvd1GGDu0w3yXCmi1cLVMMmPv3vOqghoI2UNwugDuGjgYuvD%2BnnE7qdCF3P058g6jJO0MOotbFnHn8o7D1uUwlYsfySyCzhf5XI1%2BD52

hFlcoHSCDnbVMpGm7MRfuLpXOTXoQz4QWm20%2BrS%2BKJzAV5Hq7Y32FFZazFrV9EPd%2BSlYToPBNDeY%2BTX4Z1rZfaSGYRsguH1vR0KcA%2BCpdAbEXaGVHgjmTgo1fsS5YStRqUEXTZY%2BWgDwX1QmJ1tbMz2m7%2FldXfAZ1govD2vL88%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR9DK9fWtZg&autorefresh=true

Six assorted signed cartoon volumes
eBay item description

The set had been languishing on eBay since December 2023. Decisive action clearly was needed.

Sold for a best offer of $35.00.

05075

Best Copy: The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs was published in 2012, a year before the similarly-named feline collection also from Random House. The Brattle Book Shop in Massachusetts has a copy of both "big" books, each signed by several contributors. The cartoonists who signed the Dogs book are Lee Lorenz, Bob Mankoff, Roz Chast, Victoria Roberts and Jules Feiffer. A number of writers also signed alongside their contributions: Roddy Doyle, Ian Frazier, Malcolm Gladwell (who also penned the foreword), Adam Gopnik, Jonathan Lethem, and poet Charles Simic. There must have been a launch party or some in-house celebration for so many signatures to be readily obtained, one would think. The price: $200.

Spot drawing
Otto Soglow

Image added September 2, 2023

The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs
Biblio listing accessed August 5, 2023

https://www.biblio.com/book/big-new-yorker-book-dogs-gladwell/d/1507328807?placement=search_results_list

Note:  "Best Copy" is a new designation for the blog, but I think this multiply-signed copy of The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs fits the bill. As with yesterday's post about The Big New Yorker Book of Cats, this is subjectively the best copy of the Dogs book I've seen, but I acknowledge that others may have seen even better. I hope readers with access to such copies, if materially different from this one, will pass along some images.

04403

Ronald Searle: Pardong M'sieur

Pardong M'sieur is Ronald Searle's 1965 French language cartoon collection. Most of the drawings are wordless anyway, but the single heading Paris by night was retained in the author's native tongue, perhaps in error. The book was intended, one assumes, to extend Searle's popularity into the French market, bringing that country's readers up to date with a carefully curated selection of his work since 1953, much of it set in and around Paris. It was published by Éditions Denoël, the French house who also published the work of Jean-Jacques Sempé, René Goscinny, Jean-Maurice Bosc, Jules Feiffer, and Tomi Ungerer. I always thought the book was hard to find, but perhaps I was looking on the wrong continent. When a copy turned up on eBay for $35, it suddenly became attainable. My best offer of $25 was rejected by the seller. The seller's counteroffer of $30 was then accepted by me. Essentially, I saved the cost of shipping.

That's the Boucherie Chevaline on the cover, Parisian purveyor of horse meat. 

Ronald Searle
eBay listing accessed December 17, 2022

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334641330197?hash=item4dea2d7815:g:QPUAAOSwg19jipcU&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAA8EziHaRDOh8z

TRjOkfHSVjvluAEjTgr9MlNN7%2Ft1UFCySfFp%2FcCanBFSUof0ikGRltqgn7fh97icAzBSwZ49z3EplhlcWPdMGk7rDALZQznQvPTdOKU54XHBaQOGr0eEae0Gdmky4lMOO8rFAyrSeB8t4oiEUkdaE8y0SheHoHrJpQMxdWzC

yauHZfrOJCBh3xb5Mg3cuZnPXMo1%2F90v8CUjdzlnHwB9WP%2Fifkn%2BOi6xGgC3E6DBwM91JyMQp%2BodK1JJJ8%2Bj%2BeOfoTXrdKvAbDNgwQxJypaS1M6dULCRQQpCqp71kZ213Nu7Dw33VOVmWg%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABFBM_LCboKRh

Ronald Searle
"This book is in very condition..."
eBay item description

04214

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