Caption Contest Commentary

P.C. Vey’s cartoon is set in a police station, where a fisherman is looking at a line-up of five fish who are wearing numbers for identification. A plainclothes detective is looking at the fish and speaking, though it’s not clear whether she’s addressing the fish, the fisherman, or the armed and uniformed officer standing behind…
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In Drew Panckeri’s cartoon, a man who’s sitting on his front step as if it were a throne is holding an icicle as if it were a scepter. He’s flanked by five vaguely threatening snowmen, and they’re all looking at a postal worker who’s delivering the mail. The man who would be king is addressing…
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In Chris Weyant’s drawing, a man is showing off to his friend or neighbor an upright vacuum cleaner that’s on the mantle above the fireplace. After a loved one is cremated, some people put the ashes in an urn and display it on the mantle. Because vacuum cleaners also hold ashes, I thought of the…
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In Bob Eckstein’s Halloween-themed cartoon, a woman dressed as a witch is holding a bowl of candy and saying something to a child dressed as the Capitol. A couple pieces of candy have fallen out of the bowl, perhaps to indicate that the woman was truly startled. To the left of the kid dressed as…
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I was twelve years old in 1974, when I first saw a paperback copy of “Jaws.”  On the front cover a great white shark rose from the depths toward a naked woman swimming on the surface.  And there, together, were my two greatest fears: sharks and naked women. My fear of naked women was complicated—it…
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