Caption Contest Commentary

This month’s contest featured a cartoon by the legendary Mick Stevens, whose work has appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1979. It’s also featured on the cover of my book, which I’m hoping you’ll buy: In Stevens’ cartoon, two anthropomorphic and identically dressed eggs are standing in front of a high brick wall. One…
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This month we were joined by New Yorker cartoonist Rich Sparks, whose band, The Last Afternoons, just released their latest album, “Deadfall.” You should buy it, along with Sparks’s cartoon collection, “Love and Other Weird Things,” which Roz Chast blurbed even though she says she is “trying to get out of the blurb game.” Sparks’s…
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This month’s contest featured a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Glen Le Lievre. It’s set in a dingy apartment, where a princess who’s wearing a hennin—a headdress in the shape of a cone—is sitting on a couch next to a fat unicorn who’s smoking. They’re watching TV. The end table next to the unicorn, and…
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This month’s contest features a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Seth Fleishman. It’s set in a tailor’s fitting room, where Dracula is wearing a long black cloak with a blood-red fringe around the collar and looking at himself in a triple dressing mirror. He cannot, of course, see his reflection. Dracula has his back to…
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This month’s contest featured a drawing by New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein, whose most recent book just came out. It’s called “Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums—Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums.” It includes many beautiful drawings of museums or pieces from the museums’ permanent collections, and stories from people like Bill…
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“Charmingly eccentric.” That’s what Kirkus Reviews called me in its review of my book on The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, which will be released on June 4, 2024. “Wood,” Kirkus states, “has a great time here, mixing the bizarre, the jocular, and the wise into a clever package.” The book is available for pre-order…
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