A two-sided drawing by William Steig changed hands last month on eBay.
The first drawing shows a knight, sword still in hand, presenting a severed head to his lady, who seems rather impassive. The lady is drawn with elegance; the knight is rough-hewn. Did that head belong to someone she knows? Was he a lover? The garden setting provides a contrast with the gruesome subject matter.
This drawing, which bears Steig's signature, is on the side with more toning, the seller notes, indicating that it was framed and displayed.
On the other, unsigned side, Steig presents us with a devil concealed behind trees. He pokes his head out and gets the attention of a well-dressed young woman walking away from him on the path to town. She pauses and turns her bonneted head towards him. Will this lead to her downfall?
Note: Whether or not these drawings ever saw publication, William Steig certainly packed a lot into them. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who recalls seeing either drawing, or perhaps a close variation, in print.
Tuesday's Illustration Art auction at Swann Galleries in New York had a generous selection of New Yorker art, including a few pieces by Jack Ziegler. His original cartoon from 1993 is as zany a tribute to motherhood as one could imagine.
"Yessirree, kids, your mother is one heck of a gal!" Jack Ziegler Original art The New Yorker, March 8, 1993, p. 85
The drawing, of course, is exaggerated, the caption somehow understated—a potent combination.
Jack Ziegler Swann Galleries Illustration Art sale of June 17, 2025
Dana Fradon's cartoon uses heavier shading and rougher lines than Ziegler's. I'm convinced that the magazine in those days was very deliberately laid out so that the cartoons on facing pages weren't too similar graphically.
"Good news! We've been selected as a potential burial site for nuclear waste." Dana Fradon The New Yorker, March 8, 1993, p. 84
Note: Readers are welcome to share images of original Jack Ziegler art on this blog. Yessirree!
The James Cox Gallery of Willow, New York, sold an original drawing by Ronald Searle (1920-2011) on Sunday. The town, by the way, is just a short ride from Woodstock.
The illustration shows the devil, all in red and carrying a pitchfork, greeting two elderly men on a commercial street by the seaside. The men, pleased to see him, wave back. Both of them carry canes. The devil wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the name "Peyton Place." Behind him is the Peyton Professional Building. Skeletons peek out from the shop windows. The art is signed only with Searle's initials suggesting, perhaps, it might not appear very large on the printed page. The full sheet reveals the artist's instructions to the printer at the lower left: "Fit in where possible on pages C or D." Were there other Searle illustrations on other lettered pages?
The work is dated 1967, evidently on the back. We are given no information as to where it might have been published.
Ronald Searle's initials
The context is not entirely clear, but the drawing does show the outdoor set of the "Peyton Place" television show, which had recently made the switch from black and white to color. The devil may be a reference to the controversial sexual content of the show. The skeletons might suggest that the two older men made some sort of bargain with the devil.
Detail of the three figures
The original art hit the auction block on Sunday with a presale estimate of $600 to $800.
Ronald Searle James Cox Gallery listing accessed May 28, 2025
A photo of the "Peyton Place" television show's outdoor set shows some of the architectural elements just as Searle drew them. It seems very likely he worked out the drawing on the set.
Note: Any reader who may have seen this drawing in print should let me know. Maybe it's a thus far overlooked illustration for TV Guide. Maybe not. In the meantime, by all means think of Attempted Bloggery as a place to post images of your devilish original art by Ronald Searle. I await your submission, wearing Prada.
I'm afraid I had to make a deal with the devil in order to solve CartoonStock Caption Contest number 183. The infernal scene is set in a shopping center's parking lot. The King of the Underworld offers a crown on a pillow to a woman packing groceries into her car. Easy peasy, right?
The rules of the monthly cash prize contest have not changed (and neither has my description of them): 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 $140 into the first twenty-eight pay-to-play contests and this twenty-ninth challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $145. Having achieved runner-up status with two previous entries, I've collected $200 from CartoonStock, so I'm still playing with the house's money, thank goodness. In fact, so few contestants enter that the odds may generally be considered favorable even for us less-gifted caption writers. My three entries are shown below, above the break. The cartoonist is David Borchart.
"I'm already enjoying the life of Satan's mistress." "Not unless you install air conditioning." "How would you feel about a church wedding?" * * * "Never mind all that. How's your wi-fi?"
September 1, 2024 Update: The Winner
Lawrence Wood mentioned my church wedding caption in his commentary, something that hasn't happened in a while:
It was the insightful Joel Mishon who selected and actually defended my caption (29:55), going so far as to call it his version of "Only if we bring them up Catholic."
The CartoonStock Caption Contest #155 is the first from the company that is pay-to-play. Five dollars gets you three entries and a chance at a single $1,000 cash prize. CartoonStock's basic business problem with the caption contest is that it is a recurring expense that brings in little or no licensing revenue. Therefore the frequency has been halved and halved again, making the contest feel less and less relevant. The answer is to try to generate enough revenue from those playing the contest to cover expenses, and to generate more interest in the contest from the significant prize money. The new calculation for caption contestants is that it isn't worth entering the contest unless one is convinced one has a better than 1-in-200 chance of winning. Fortunately for CartoonStock, most of us caption writers are delusional about how funny our entries are. To wit, my three sidesplittingly hilarious entries are shown below. The drawing is by Shannon Wheeler.
"There's nothing to do. Next time we'll go to your place." "We're raising him without religion." "We're all so unflappable."
These captions didn't take wing:
"Where do you suppose they learned to be so complacent?" "There's just not much to do on a playdate in purgatory." "It took us many years to learn to do nothing." "I thought there would be more to do in hell." "Since when do we let them play with brimstone?" "See? Good and evil CAN coexist."
July 9, 2022 Update: The Winner
So, were my chances greater than 1:200? Evidently, everybody's were. Fewer than 150 people entered, meaning the first cash prize contest operated at a loss. It's not surprising that so few entered given the difficulty of this particular contest. Why put good money on such a long shot? Mathematically, though, I suppose my own odds were better than most, since Lawrence Wood, seven-time New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest winner, went out of his way to (mis)quote mine in his Caption Contest Commentary. I don't think the celebrated captioner's unintended edit made it any better.
Louis M. Glackens (1866-1933) provided the cover illustration of Puck for Easter 1908. The artist, brother of Ashcan School founder and American Impressionist William Glackens, did work for the satirical magazine from the 1890s until its sale in 1914. The 1908 Easter cover is a bit quirky. It depicts a rainswept Easter Parade and one older gentleman's odd predicament because "his wife was ill."
HIS WIFE WAS ILL. Louis Glackens Puck, April 15, 1908
Scan by Dick Buchanan
Somewhat more cryptic are the figures prancing about the border. There seem to be an octet of red devils chasing and tormenting an octet of robed blue witches. At the top are two Easter Bunnies matching the color schemes of the devils and witches—and the very act of pursuit as well.
Note: My thanks to Dick Buchanan for this, his fifty-third contribution to Attempted Bloggery. That's one for every week of the year and one more for good luck. Dick, to his everlasting credit, maintains the monumental Dick Buchanan Cartoon Clip Files. He also contributes regularly to Mike Lynch Cartoons, most recently a splendid post entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: New Yorker Cartoonists 1935 - 1962." You won't want to miss this one.
Louis M. Glackens, I confess, is new to me and hence new to this blog.
I want to identify that church on the Glackens cover as Trinity Church, but I'm not completely sure. What of the armory-like building in the background? Can any reader identify these architectural elements as they existed in 1908 New York?
An autograph drawing and letter in French dated 19 October 1970, bears the printed address of Monica and Ronald Searle's Paris apartment at 4 Rue Antoine-Dubois. Searle, who could draw as well in French as in English (I can't vouch for the writing), has given his lucky recipient a compellingly grotesque image of the devil immersed in a book. Personally, I love the tension of the chair tilting off to the right as Lucifer leans to the left, his cloven hooves contrasted with the claw feet of the chair.
Note: I downloaded this image years ago, pre-blog, most likely from a site where the original note was offered for sale. I am happy now to restore it to the internet even though I have no information at all about it. I would be pleased to hear from anyone who does know a little something about the letter, or who can make the French out well enough to render it in reasonable English.
Other inspired scribblings of Ronald Searle, particularly those new to the 'net, are always welcome here. Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:
Take a bite out of my entries in the Moment Cartoon Caption Contest for January/February 2019. Moment is a magazine which covers topics of Jewish interest and many of the caption contests invite efforts at Jewish humor. Multiple entries are permitted. The drawing is by Benjamin Schwartz.
"For you, my personal favorite: deviled ham!" "How much could it hurt? Take that ham sandwich and add a little cheese." "Wrong guy. I'm the spokesman for Underwood." "Try a second bite, this time without all the guilt." "See? It's even better than kosher." "It tastes better if you don't think about what's in it." "It's just like Mom never used to make." "Job didn't like my sandwiches either." "Now we sing 'Cheeseburger in Paradise.'"
March 22, 2019 Update: The Finalists
Note: Last year's Moment profile of some of the Caption Contest contestants may be found here.
Classic animation from the 1930's is the inspiration behind the forthcoming Cuphead video game for Xbox. From the appearance of the trailer, the story is established in black-and-white, while the gameplay is a series of boss battles in color. As the title cards state, Cuphead and Mugman gamble with the devil and lose. They then attempt to repay their debt in a series of run and gun boss battles. The animation is drawn by hand and the backgrounds are hand-painted, giving the game a look reminiscent of the cartoon shorts of some independent animation studios of the 1930's. That intensity of effort should make it more visually-interesting than the a great many of the video games already out there. Cuphead is due out in 2016.
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