Bob Mankoff

The question I get most often as a cartoonist—besides “where do you get your ideas” (Ans. Cleveland)—is “what comes first, the caption or the picture?” For a cartoon with no caption at all, the answer is obvious. And interestingly enough, for the kind of word-centric cartoonist that I eventually became, in my early New Yorker…
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Spring is here, and vacation season should be just around the corner. Or is it actually around the corner after that? Or maybe no vacation at all while we’re cornered at home? Whose fault is this? Pretty obvious. Other people. Lots of them. Fortunately, there’s plenty of blame to go around, which is better than…
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Mother’s Day is on the way. Six days and counting. Mother’s Day has been going on since 1908, which, coincidentally, is the year my mother Mollie was born. Just a coincidence? I think yes. I owe a lot to my mom. She discouraged me from being a cartoonist, and without that discouragement, I wouldn’t have…
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Dear Cartoonistas, Now, where were we? I’m self-isolating here in Briarcliff Manor, New York, image courtesy of Google Earth and Photoshop. Last time I wrote to you, I challenged you to stump the archive. There’s nothing we don’t have a cartoon for. Do we have a cartoon for Google Earth? Yep. Photoshop? Roger. Like I…
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I remember when “There’s an app for that” was an iPhone commercial tagline that spawned a million memes: and a slew of app-propriate cartoons, like those I’ve included here. Cartoons are like memes. Taking familiar situations and tweaking them to fit new events: new wine in an old bottle, so to speak. Nowhere is this…
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My Fellow Humans, I’m casting a wide net here because now we’re all in the same boat, although, let’s face it, some of us have cabins much higher above the waterline than others. We should be really grateful for that. I know I am. There is humor to be found in this crisis, but sadly…
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