Going In Person to the New Yorker & The Wonderful Year of 2025, So Far

For Gag Cartoonists Wondering When Did Selling Become So Difficult; Part 4

Geez, what a start of the year so far. It’s unimaginable to what some people have been dealing with.

Everything we thought could not happen is happening. Everything is opposite. Staying in is the new going out. Trust no one and watch your back, yet believe in everything and keep a good front. Lawyer up or you will go down. I’m just about through and I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do in my life. We are happy, sad, and shocked, all at the same time.

Walk away from that Amazon shopping cart, filled with jumbo calm gummies, news-cycle cancelling headphones, and industrial size stress balls. Stop updating payments terms, downloading workout apps. The only thing I’ve learned is that everything in life must change.

With everything going on, I carefully curate my work to be sensitive, being sure to not make light of anything that can be remotely associated with someone’s loss. Even then, I find myself offending. A recently published cartoon for the West Side Rag, shown here, was changed before it went to print.

Appearing in West Side Rag

I still found a way to offending others without realizing it—the last panel had upset a reader, who wrote,

“Subway surfing is NOT a joke! Kids are getting killed doing that!”

Of course, I wasn’t thinking along those lines when I drew it. Similarly, when I draw a desert island cartoon, I am not intending on mocking homelessness, or any of the dangers many of my cartoon’s set-ups are introducing that may offend some readers. I offered to write a public apology but the editors felt that wouldn’t be necessary.

Conversely, I was surprised a recent New Yorker cartoon (shown below) was well-received. I heard from people around the world thanking me (and confirmed that they were indeed scared of the future. Nobody from Saturn.).

The New Yorker is celebrating its 100th anniversary. There is a special exhibit at the Society of Illustrators curated by New Yorker cartoonist, Liza Donnelly. Michael Maslin’s Inkspill blog has coverage of the event’s premiere, HERE.

Drawing for an audience of one. That’s what it felt like when I began submitting to The New Yorker in 2007 and showing up at their offices every Tuesday. Especially as the secondary markets became more and more secondary. One of the perks of submitting to the magazine was the opportunity to sit across from the Cartoon Editor, Bob Mankoff, in person. Initially, all other contributors who showed up were all seasoned pros, cartoonists like Gahan Wilson, George Booth, Leo Cullum… Some came up the ranks of The New Yorker with Bob and were friends with him. As someone who whose work I studied and looked up to with reverence, I got nervous making small talk with Bob. We since met outside the office, lunched and even played ping-pong a couple of times, but in his office, it was like Groundhog Day, going on a job interview once a week. Nervous I would let him down, that my work wouldn’t make him laugh, or I would let myself down, not producing the high level of work that appeared in the magazine and not make a sale or just plain embarass myself in some way. At that time I was not a good cartoonist, but I was surrounded by those I was learning from and I hung on every word, for what could be key advice or clues to becoming better…

My first cartoon in The New Yorker.