Caption Contest Commentary

Drew Panckeri has drawn a witch addressing an adult couple she has turned into inflatable pool floats. I first imagined her chastising the couple for complaining: “You’re lucky I turned you into something that floats.” “One more word and I’ll turn you both into stones.” “You know what they’d do to me if I floated?…
Continue Reading…

Pat Byrnes has drawn a comedy club full of robots. An audience member is heckling the comic on stage and delivering the line that will serve as the caption. I therefore thought the caption should be an insult. Because robots are metal, and metal rusts, my first insult alludes to the title of Neil Young’s…
Continue Reading…

At P.C. Vey’s cocktail party, a woman standing by the buffet is holding a drink in her left hand and chatting with a man. On her head is a futuristic contraption (maybe a death-ray?) pointing at the man to whom she’s talking. She’s wearing the space age gadget like a hat, complete with a chin-strap,…
Continue Reading…

In the background of Charlie Hankin’s oil field are four machines extracting crude oil from the ground. Next to several large holes in the ground are treasure chests, presumably filled with gold.  Kneeling beside one of these treasure chests is a roughneck who’s saying something to his fellow roughneck. I suspect that Hankin drew this…
Continue Reading…

In Joe Dator’s cartoon, the Ancient Mariner from Coleridge’s poem is standing barefoot and alone at a cocktail party, with the albatross tied around his neck. To his left, a female guest says something to her partner. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge’s longest poem, is about a sailor who recounts his story of…
Continue Reading…

In Robert Leighton’s cartoon, a woman standing next to a large, wall-mounted flat-screen TV is addressing a man who’s sitting in an armchair and pointing a remote control at the screen, on which there appears an extremely complicated math problem. Seeing a couple and a TV made me think of the now-common phrase, “Netflix and…
Continue Reading…