The Best New Yorker Cartoons Voted By ME

Let the Debate Begin

Wide right. That’s what it will say one day on Buffalo’s tombstone. I feel really bad for them and was rooting for the town to catch a break for once. They might as well change the team name to the Buffalo Bill Buckners. Can you believe it’s been over two months since that 44-yd game-tying attempt sailed right?

Buffalo is, technically, the only football team playing in New York. I’m a New Yorker. I get defensive about that as I’ve had old-timers tell me there’s nothing New Yorker about me, berating me for being an out-of-town Brit. Born in the shadows of Yankee Stadium, my dad drove a cab and then was a New York City bus driver. I’ve lived in every borough, if you don’t count Staten Island (which nobody does). But I love Staten Island and I regularly commute on the Staten Island Ferry to go play to tennis with a buddy there, a Staten Islander, and visit the National Lighthouse Museum there. I went to school in New York City and I taught at three New York City colleges. Additionally, over the years, I have written  columns and editorials for The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Village Voice and The New York Times. My favorite food is bagels & lox. My long-winded point is, I’m a New Yorker. C’mon, what else do I have to do?

Some would argue that still doesn’t qualify me to pick the best New Yorker cartoons. But I did have the the honor to meet or know some of the best New Yorker cartoonists, personally: George Booth, Roz Chast, Leo Cullum, Sam Gross, William Hamilton, Sid Harris, Arnie Levin, Ed Koren, Bob Mankoff, Michael Maslin, Mick Stevens, Bob Weber, and Jack Ziegler. And I want to make it clear that there are countless other cartoonists who I love, who I hate leaving out…but I just named those who were the first I met.

Besides, this Best New Yorker Cartoons list is not about the cartoonists but individual cartoons. I wanted to keep it to my all-time favorites, just the “Top Five” (in my opinion).

This was initially for a Top 5 Best Cartoons list for the CartoonStock, awhile back when they let me write an “Artist Spotlight” piece about being a single-panel gag cartoonist on their blog. It was fun and a confidence booster at a time when I was feeling pretty blah about my own cartoons. So thank you to CartoonStock’s Trevor Huey and Bob Mankoff for letting me do that.)

It’s an impossible task to pick the best cartoons from the magazine but easier when I created some provisions. I eliminated cartoons by one-hit-wonder cartoonists (which btw, the best example of that is Steve Way’s God cartoon, “Did the job in six days and billed them for seven,” his only cartoon that make it into the New Yorker, ever.).

I choose from only established, acclaimed cartoonists. Everyone here has had hundreds of published cartoons with two, or three, possibly qualifying for the “Mount Rushmore of Cartooning.”

I also passed on cartoons that became phenomenons; like Sam Gross’ frog legs or his snail/tape dispenser drawing, or Peter Steiner’s “On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog” or Bob Mankoff’s “How about never? Does never work?” Those cartoons took on a life of their own. I would argue there are at least two Mankoff cartoons that are better than his infamous never one; “A billion is a thousand million? Why wasn't I informed of this?” and the one with the very long phone conversation that ends with “…I think you've called the wrong Bill Baley.” And that’s the case with so many other masters. I love all the aforementioned cartoons and so many more. I may have to do a Top Ten Michael Maslin Cartoons list or a Top Ten Top Ten Mick Stevens in the near future.

Instead I focused on cartoons that also had other things going for them and where the concepts for each were far more challenging to draw. Plus they were quietly game-changers, for reasons that I explain below or best left to the viewer to deduce.

Finally, I kept the picks to just cartoons since I started reading the magazine in the mid ‘80s. This overlooks many great cartoons but I’ll skip judging cartoons before my time without the context of the times they were published in.

I invite all discourse and rebuttal.

The Top Five New Yorker Cartoons (voted by me).