Innholdsfortegnelse for Cartoons of the Year 2013 i The New Yorker

BOB MANKOFF has been a cartoonist for The New Yorker since 1977 and its cartoon editor since 1997. His memoir, “How About Never—Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoons,” to be published in 2014, will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about him. DREW DERNAVICH has contributed cartoons to The New Yorker since 2002. He is in the middle of a book project and a Web project, but has successfully completed this bio. He appears in the humor compendium “PBQ Presents: Madame Bainbridge’s Compendium of Primo Dong (Abridged).” Besides having cartooned for The New Yorker since 2007, BOB ECKSTEIN is a snowman expert and author of “The History of the Snowman.” His next book is called “The Sea Below Us.” He also contributes to…

It was the late twentieth century, and I needed answers. What did I want to be when I grew up? My response was to be printed in the 1992 Greenacres fifth-grade yearbook—the yearbook of record for the Greenacres Elementary School fifth grade. Logan Winston called dibs on being an ice-hockey player. Matt Scherling saw himself as a test pilot. I needed a realistic goal too. I thought long and hard and short and soft. Ultimately, I hedged: Why a cartoonist? I was very creative. My imagination was my most developed muscle (take that, deltoids!), plus I had some natural talent when it came to drawing. I just needed an outlet. At a time when most of my friends were discovering girls, I discovered comic books. It was love at first…

While professional cartooning is a full-time job, sometimes the exigencies of being funny for money have necessitated having another job as well. In that way, many cartoonists have been harbingers of the current state of the economy, in which holding down two jobs has become the new normal. I recently surveyed New Yorker cartoonists to find out what kind of other jobs they had held while also cartooning for the magazine. Most of the supplementary jobs are what you’d expect—bartender, telemarketer, car-service driver. Others are bit more unusual—night guard at the Art Institute of Chicago, plant-tender at an office building, doing voiceovers for Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps the most unusual of these side jobs is held by Drew Dernavich, who hand-engraves photo-realistic pictures on gravestones. We asked him to describe…

1 NO PAIN. Experiencing zero discomfort. You would not be entirely wrong to call this a party. 2 MILD DISCOMFORT. Conversation is moderately easy. Of course, the evening is young. Wait, my cousin Carl is coming over to me. Bet he says something asinine. 3 TOLERABLE PAIN. The initial pain is not so strong that I feel I have to leave immediately, but more of an annoyance, like a pebble in my shoe. Key to surviving these functions is to avoid everyone, or at least to constantly circulate, so you’re a moving target. 4 MODERATE PAIN. Like sharp heartburn, or stepping on a lawn rake. Conversation is challenging, but able to pretend I’m listening to others. Why is my sixteen-year-old niece dressed like a streetwalker? At least she’s working, which…

I spend a lot of my spare time browsing through ancient issues of The New Yorker, looking for something I’ve never seen before or noticed before. Back in 2008, while looking through the very first issues of the magazine, I came across some unfamiliar cartoonists and decided to find out a little more about them. What I found were a number of cartoonists who, during their entire careers, contributed only one cartoon to the magazine. Just one. I decided these special contributors needed their own designation, and so the One and Done Club was born. Since 2008, I’ve gone through The New Yorker’s entire list of cartoonists, checking the numbers of contributions. In the end, I counted a hundred and twenty-seven cartoonists who contributed only one cartoon (I didn’t get…

DAVID SIPRESS Daily Cartoonist October 31, 2012-January 2, 2013 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. On the worst side, there was Hurricane Sandy, the stress leading up to the election, the stress following the election, the fiscal cliff, the angry right, and, last but not least, the Mayan Apocalypse. Throw in the usual holiday madness and the love life of General Petraeus, and you’ve got a couple of the craziest months in memory. But it was the best of times for the newly minted daily cartoonist, since there was a huge amount of material to work with—especially since I tend to look first to the things that make me anxious when I search for ideas. And speaking of being anxious, I was initially…

Hey, what’s with the quotation marks around “win”? They’re ironic, in two senses of the word. First, in the traditional sense of something ironic, meaning the opposite of what is said—so partly what I’m going to show you is how to lose the contest. By doing the opposite, you will improve your captions. Second, in the sense of distancing myself from the over-the-top claim I made in the title, in order to have you chomping at the bit to read this. So stop your chomping. Actually, I just found out from Google that it’s not chomping, it’s champing. Anyway, stop that too. But don’t be too disappointed. Remember, it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game (Russian roulette excepted), and I am going to tell…