Cartoon critics Phil Witte and Rex Hesner look behind gags to debate what makes a cartoon tick. This week our intrepid critics take a look at springtime. As the epic pandemic grinds on, the routine of everyday life has been dramatically disrupted. We yearn for something predictable and comforting. Mother Nature provides the relief we…
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“Party Pill” Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood
Bob Eckstein’s cartoon is set at a cocktail party, where a large, anthropomorphic red and white pill is holding a glass of wine and chatting with three other guests. Because many medications interact poorly with alcohol, I first had the pill explaining why he could have a cocktail: “You can’t drink if you’re on medication,…
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ZoooomToooons!
On the one hand, I’ve been tethered in place for the last two months. But on the other, I’ve been Zooooooooooooooooming all over the place—teaching a class on The New Yorker caption contest down at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, doing presentations on Jewish humor at JCCs all around the country, and joining a…
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“Surgeon and Potted Plant” Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood
Many New Yorker cartoons are set in a hospital waiting room, where a surgeon addresses someone who’s anxiously awaiting news of the patient’s condition. Frank Cotham’s surgeon was mercenary: Zachary Kanin’s was desperate for company: And Danny Shanahan’s was well-intentioned but misguided: Shanahan is now back with yet another variation on this scenario, but this…
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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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