The CartoonStock Cartoon Caption Contest No. 206

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 la Carmen 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:

Image added June 9, 2026

https://www.cartoonstock.com/blog/fruity-wedding-caption-contest-commentary-with-lawrence-wood/

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. 

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Peter Arno's Side-Show for March 1937

The March 1937 installment of Peter Arno's "Side-Show" is definitely a keeper. I'm keeping my copy. The magazine is College Humor. These Arno cartoons must have created a sensation among young readers, but they were never collected and have been lost to popular culture for many decades. My guess, though, is that the people who encountered these drawings when they were coming of age remembered them fondly for life.

"Hurry, dear! Our guests are beginning to arrive!"
Peter Arno
College Humor, March 1937, p. 18 

"Gosh, I forgot to look at your teeth, didn't I?"
* * * 
"After the part where you tell them to 'speak now or forever hold their peace'—er—don't pause too long."
Peter Arno
College Humor, March 1937, p. 19

Here's the original art for each of these as seen on a 1985 contact sheet from the Nicholls Gallery:

"Hurry, dear! Our guests are beginning to arrive!"

"Gosh, I forgot to look at your teeth, didn't I?"

"After the part where you tell them to 'speak now or forever hold their peace'—er—don't pause too long."

Note:  For those keeping score at home, I am still looking for the published versions of three of the Peter Arno College Humor cartoons consigned to the Nicholls Gallery in 1985. There's also a "rather dumb" Otto Soglow psychoanalysis cartoon that should be in one of these issues as well.

"It's the master's idea—says it keeps them out of the Stork Club."
Peter Arno
Original art
College Humor, c. 1936-1937

"It isn't every student I'd let mark her own examination paper, Miss Dawson."
College Humor, c. 1936-1937

"You may shut off the heater now, Oglethorpe!"
Peter Arno
Original art
College Humor, c. 1936-1937

An organ grinder on the street feels sad that his monkey has more satisfying interactions with people than he does. He goes to a psychoanalyst and soon after changes places with the monkey.

"I think rather dumb." —Barbara Nicholls

Otto Soglow

So I'm keeping an eye out for "It's the master's idea—says it keeps them out of the Stork Club," "It isn't every student I'd let mark her own examination paper, Miss Dawson," and "You may shut off the heater now, Oglethorpe," but if any reader should already know where they are hiding out, please do tell.

All right, if you insist, I'll give you my own best guess for the location of these cartoons: College Humor, February 1937. Unfortunately, I don't see a copy currently available for sale but one was sold on eBay not all that long ago.

Modeled by Bil Baird
Color photo by Dudley Lee
College Humor, February 1937

College Humor, February 1937
eBay listing ended June 28, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166055249480

College Humor, February 1937
eBay item description

Here are some better images made with a scanner:

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=53000599

So please give a shout if you have a copy. And for heaven's sake, stay out of the Stork Club.

July 13, 2025 Update:  At long last, I can confirm that the three Arno cartoons are indeed from the February 1937 issue. I have made small corrections to the captions on the two horizontal cartoons.

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Saul Steinberg: Fabric Patterns

Saul Steinberg's fabric designs are, like much of his work, wildly inventive, but that doesn't mean it's easy to find a market for a collection of manufactured articles, specifically three garment bags, seven small pillow cases, and a bolt of silk fabric. These textiles are fine works of design; Swann Galleries chose to include them in the Vintage Posters sale. They are problematic to price: they went unsold last year when offered with an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000. Yesterday, with a more moderate estimate of $2,000 to $3,000, the grouping was sold for $1,500—$1875 with the premium.

Wedding Picture (1950)
Saul Steinberg
Patterson Fabrics, New York, NY

Horses (1951)

Saul Steinberg

Piazza Prints, New York, NY

Saul Steinberg
Swann Galleries
Vintage Posters, August 4, 2022, sale 2612, lot 407

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/SAUL-STEINBERG-(1914-1999)--[FABRIC-PATTERNS--HORSES--THE-WE?saleno=2612&lotNo=407&refNo=788257

Wedding Picture, shown above in pink, was also manufactured with blue, gray, and yellow backgrounds. A taller roll of the yellow version was sold at Swann Galleries in 2020:

Wedding Picture (1950)
642 x 37 inches, 1630 x 94 cm
Saul Steinberg
Patterson Fabrics, New York, NY

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/SAUL-STEINBERG-(1914-1999)-WEDDING-PICTURE-Bolt-of-silk-fabr?saleno=2538&lotNo=227&refNo=770678

A gray version from Patterson's affiliate Piazza Prints, here called Wedding, is in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt:

Wedding (1950)
710 x 770 cm
Saul Steinberg
Piazza Prints, New York, NY

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/wedding-saul-steinberg/oAGCziYwacj7_w?ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.128901134206092%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.1872983818770213%2C%22height%22%3A1.2374999999999992%7D%7D

The Saul Steinberg Foundation's website shows the version with the blue background, also from the Cooper Hewitt:

https://saulsteinbergfoundation.org/search-artwork/page/2/

And it is the Cooper Hewitt, again, that has the full 1951 sidewall of Horses:

http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18391855/

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My Entry in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #735

You can stick a fork in my entry to The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #735 for November 30, 2020. The drawing is by Johnny DiNapoli.

"These days I'm consumed with guilt."

December 13, 2020 Update:  The Finalists

December 14, 2020 Update:  This week I neglected my Constitutional right to vote. I like the caption from Somerville best.

December 28, 2020 Update:  The Winner

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The Cartoon Collections Caption Contest #93

The Cartoon Collections Caption Contest #93 manages to misspell the name of the cartoonist. At least Cartoon Collections got Godzilla's name right. The drawing is by Brooke Bourgeois.

I had some concern that the bride possibly could be the intended speaker here, but I strongly preferred to have Godzilla as the speaker and I went with this in all three captions I submitted.

"Do I look like the sort to forever hold my peace?"
"I hope you weren't planning a honeymoon in Tokyo."
"Sorry, they didn't have a tux in my size."

September 30, 2020 Update:  The Winner

The bride is the speaker in each of these three.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Brooke Bourgeois

Weddings

  

The Cartoon Collections Caption Contest

The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest

The Moment Magazine Cartoon Caption Contest

All the Collected Cartoon Caption Contests

Attempted Bloggery's Bourgeoise Index

 

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Saber Arches: Peter Arno and Barbara Shermund

Peter Arno and Barbara Shermund were leading cartoonists of their day. Both of them honed their craft in the pages of the early New Yorker. Both excelled at depicting sexy situations. Occasionally, as it happened, they arrived at similar scenarios. What if we were to compare how two talented cartoonists, one a man and one a woman, handled a given theme?

The saber arch is a military wedding honor practiced around the world. Bride and groom walk in procession under the raised swords of soldiers. Both cartoonists present gags with a backstory in which the bride herself has a history with the soldiers. As one might expect, Arno and Shermund handle the situation quite differently.

We'll start with Peter Arno, not because he's alphabetically first, but because his cartoon appeared in print first, and by a dozen years:

"…Hello, Edmund. Hello, Warwick. Hello, Teddy. Hello, Poodgie. Hello, Kip. Hello, Freddie…"
Peter Arno
The New Yorker, July 25, 1936, page 14

https://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1936-07-25#folio=014

Arno's New Yorker cartoon was well-known, although whether Barbara Shermund recalled it is anybody's guess. Her cartoon appeared in color on the cover of Pictorial Review, a Sunday supplement syndicated by King Features:

"Do you think it's safe? I jilted most of them!"
Barbara Shermund
Pictorial Review (Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph), June 27, 1948

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Sunday-Magazine-Cover-by-Barbara-Shermund-from-6-27-1948-Tabloid-Page-Size-/143029247601?hash=item214d351e71%3Ag%3AzkAAAOSwr81UTY1m&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

A critical difference between the two gags is evident. Arno, the male cartoonist, has devised a gag in which the groom is made to feel humiliated by the suggested promiscuity of the bride. Shermund, the female cartoonist, presents a gag which emphasizes the bride's social and even physical discomfort.

Barbara Shermund's niece Amanda Gormley notes:

In Arno's illustration, the groom has clearly been cuckolded and there appears to exist, in the bride's facial expression, [her intention] that he should expect perceived behaviors going forward. The bride is unfettered. 

Conversely, Shermund's bride has "jilted" and renounced her paramours seemingly in favor of her groom. She's less responsible for her beaus' reactions because of her femininity and beauty as she now looks to her groom for protection, something he seems resigned to do.

This pair of cartoons reinforces then how important it is to hear different voices in cartooning. When we do, we are likely to get perspectives which differ from each other, and which differ from our own.

https://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1936-07-25#folio=014

Note:  "Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund" is now on view at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. It will remain on exhibit through March 31, 2019.

Posts on Instagram with the hashtag #barbarashermund may be seen here.

Instagram posts hashtagged #peterarno may be found here.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Peter Arno

Barbara Shermund

Weddings

The New Yorker

Pictorial Review

Attempted Bloggery's Faithful Index

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