My Two Favorite New Yorker Cartoons of All Time

Comments

[Bruce Moomaw]

The one that sticks in my mind, from late 1971: A suburban couple watch Santa Claus fly off their roof. Plastered on the rear of his sleigh are two bumper stickers: "Register Communists, Not Firearms" and "Let's Get The US Out Of The UN". The man says, "Funny -- somehow I always thought of him as kind of a liberal."

[prostratedragon]

Mine, from early '90s:

A large, banked seating gallery is packed with mice---well, ok, rats. One of the two rats facing them from the stage speaks:

"Your father and I wanted to tell you why we've decided to live apart."

NB: In no way is this meant as a surreptitious comment on the subject of DeLong's preceding post.

[Emily]

My favorite is from way back. It's a Thurber cartoon. In the court room, a guy is on the witness stand. The lawyer points to a kangaroo and says, "Perhaps THIS will refresh your memory!" I kept thinking of that as I read the live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial.

[Aniruddha G. Kulkarni]

Cartooning as an art is still not given its due place. I have made a small attempt on my blog @http://searchingforlaugh.blogspot.com/

In last few months, I decided to go through all New Yorker cartoons from 1936 (my father's birth year), my birth year 1960 and that of my son 1994.

I found 1936 the best of them. A lot of their work from '36 has remained so fresh and relevant. These days I don't like America, but I just love America of 1936's New Yorker.

Some of their artists from that era were as classy as well known poets, painters, musicians, philosophers from the same era but still world knows so little about them.

New Yorker indeed is one of the very (few) best America has to offer to the world.

By the way, I just hope no future events will push Nixons and Bushes back into the manistream!

[Percy Percy]

My all-time favorite is the Barsotti cartoon from just after the 2000 election. A thug sits at a bar with a big bag of cash in front of him and says "Of course it's stolen. But now we just have to get on with our lives."

[Jonathan Goldberg]

The competition is too much for me. We have the enormous book and I couldn't possibly pick a clear winner. One I'll mention: two businessmen watching a bank robbery taking place across the street. One is saying to the other "Well, at least they're not standing around waiting for a government handout."

[josh bivens]

a recent one was pretty great (especially given the recent weather in the east) - 2 guys walking down the street in blustery cold and one of them is saying:

"long term i'm worried about global warming; short term, about freezing my ass off"

[Andrew]

1990s/2000s

Man looking down at Cat: "Never, EVER, think outside the box."

[Donald A. Coffin]

I have no question about which cartoon is the best. When I read it, I dropped the magazine, stood up, and aplauded:

http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=6EM0CMEU9UF59G51DD1WBDR820WW4TS8&sitetype=1&did=4&sid=42688&pid=&keyword=dana+fradon&section=cartoons&title=undefined&whichpage=3&sortBy=popular

[Donald A. Coffin]

Well, I guess I can't paste the link in. It's by Dana Fradon, and it's a baseball line score for "Realists" vs "Idealists". Go to www.newyorker.com, click on cartoons, cartoon bank, and search for Dana Fradon. It's on the first page of his cartoons.

[Emma Anne]

We have this one on our refrigerator, from shortly after we got out of law school: a man and a woman are sitting on the couch, and one of them says, "on the other hand, the *examined* life doesn't produce much income." So true - many of our classmates make about five times what we do.

Runner up: "I don't know much about the constitution, but I know what I like."

[Andre]

Best cartoonI remember is from an early seventies "Punch". A policeman escorts away two low-lives in a high rise housing estate. One says to the other - "Personally, I blame it on LeCorbusier"

[John Emerson]

My favorite isn't a New Yorker cartoon.

A naked couple is lying in bed. They've been making a porn movie, and there are cameramen, lights, etc. all around. The woman is looking annoyed and saying "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'What are you doing after work?'?"

[Jared Bernstein]

Here in DC, you can go nuts listening to the punditry hold forth on anything, regardless of their expertise. In that regard, I always loved this Gary Larson cartoon. It's set in a bar where this drunk is yelling at a kangeroo, "Let me tell you a little something about marsupials!"

[Jared Bernstein]

Here in DC, you can go nuts listening to the punditry hold forth on anything, regardless of their expertise. In that regard, I always loved this Gary Larson cartoon. It's set in a bar where this drunk is yelling at a kangeroo, "Let me tell you a little something about marsupials!"

["Q" the Enchanter]

Recent one that for some reason sticks in my head: Man, stripped to his boxers, stands next to Doctor; Man has what look like little goldfish jumping into and out of his arm, as if his arm were a small body of water; Doctor, carefully inspecting Man's arm, says, "Arm fish--insurance won't cover that."

I'd like to gloss it as a statement about our health care system, but deep down I know it's just stupid funny.

[andres]

From the top cartoon:

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."

Which brings to mind the recurring mantra:

"Impeach George Bush. Impeach him now."

You can have your own blog _and_ engage in pointless incessant barking at the same time ;-)

[AndrewBW]

My favorite, from very early on in the New Yorker's life. A mother puts a plate of broccoli down in front of her daughter and says, "It's broccoli dear." The little girl furiously turns up her nose, declaring "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it!"

[Palolo lolo]

I haven't been able to find it,but the word "Nothing" is on a pedestal,there's a throng bowing down,and the observer ask, "Is nothing sacred?"

[Greg B.]

I love the cartoon with two Native Americans spying the arrival of a European ship in the new world from behind a tree.

"Dude! I am so not prepared for this!"

[Eric Blair]

James Stevenson, ca. 1974: A young interviewee, being shown round the office area by an executive, sees a wild, distraught face peering out of a partially-opened door, and who hisses to YI -
"For God's sake, don't join this firm". FAB to the FABth power!

[lake michigan]

Palolo - that cartoon is also my favorite and may have been in Playboy...

[Ross Smith]

(The one about Nothing is by Gahan Wilson.)

One I saw recently, can't remember where, that totally cracked me up:

Ordinary guy walking down the street, talking into his cellphone: "Could you hold on a minute please? I think I just took another photograph of my ear."

[johne]

In "Punch," years and years ago: one caveman to another, as they regard a UFO hovering above them: "One thing is certain -- their technology is thousands of years ahead of ours." Sure enough, the UFO, with its little green aliens, is replete with cylinders, connecting rods, steam domes, with smoke rolling from its brass-bound stack.

[Eli Rabett]

Does anything top Thurber's Touche

[lee]

Two impeccably dressed vice-presidents inside a New York bank, outside a bum. One vice-president is tying to shoo the bum away through the window. The other vice-president says "No, no, he's one of our best customers."

[Charlie Murtaugh]

My favorite remains a William (?) Hamilton cartoon from the 1970s, with a boozy, bemused stockbrokerish dad saying to his earnest hippy daughter, "Sexism? But I just got over racism!"

[Bruce Moomaw]

Gahan Wilson also did one recently -- maybe for the New Yorker; I found it in one of his anthologies -- depicting Heaven as a seedy-looking place in which the second "E" has fallen off the entrance sign and all the blessed souls are wandering around wearing dirty patched robes, stick-on name tags, and haloes made out of coat hangers. One says, "Somehow I always thought the place would be classier than this."

Of course, you could launch a whole thread just on the subject of Favorite Gahan Wilson Cartoons.

[Bruce Moomaw]

The famous "Spinach" cartoon was by Carl Rose -- who also came up with the idea for "Touche!", which Thurber was assigned to execute because, as Thurber explained, "My characters, unlike Rose's, obviously have no blood in them."

However, my favorite Rose cartoon is one in which a nervous mugger is snapping at his victim, "This is a water pistol -- I mean this is a stickup."

[Bruce Garrett]

Not a New Yorker cartoon, but the gay magazine Christopher Street back in the 1970s ran cartoons that were very New Yorker-ish in style (Christoper Street was, I think, running Roz Chast cartoons well before the New Yorker discovered her). My all time favorite carton was of a little boat at dockside with its owners, a couple guys, busily getting it ready to set sail. On the stern of their boat was written the name, "The Boat That Dare Not Speak Its Name".

I have a couple New Yorker cartoons on my wall at work: The one with the beggar in a tattered suit standing on a street corner, a destitute look on his face, holding a sign that reads, "An Unexpected Error Of Type 3 Has Occurred".

The other is of two mathematicians in front of a blackboard packed with this really hairy looking equation. The one has taken a piece of chalk and drawn a big X over the whole thing, while the other looks on and says, "That's it? That's peer review?"