Tom Gauld did the cover for this issue, the dreary day with the warm inside scene. Be sure to click that link and visit his site. He has a new book called Physics for Cats which I will now order.
As I write this the fascist takeover of the US government under Drumpf and Mush is in full swing, causing me again to ponder whether it makes any sense to be reviewing cartoons as democracy is under such serious attack. This takes me about 2 hours a week and I enjoy it. That leaves me another 166 hours to engage with the rest of the world and try to sleep now and then.
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Reaction
Quasi erudite commentary:
1
Batting leadoff is Juan Astasio with the police and coffee table cartoon, which I loved. Years ago my office was next to Boston Police headquarters and there were planters out front with just soil, no flowers. There were two police guys out there, admin types, and one was saying to the other “Can’t we get some flowers here, some fucking petunias or something?”
It was a real life cartoon of how police might talk about flowers, adding enough f bombs to maintain their tough guy identity.
This cartoon echoed that for me and I give it a Very Funny.
2
Matthew Diffee did the truly oddball more gravy cartoon. Diffee, by the way, is the fellow behind the wonderful Rejection Collection books of cartoons rejected by the New Yorker, some of which are incredibly good. He is a long-time New Yorker regular, but I don’t really get this one.
It implies the guy is drinking a cup of gravy and the waitress wants to know if he wants more… yes, I don’t get it.
But maybe if I was smoking some weed and in the right frame of mind it might be a lot funnier…
3
Tom Chitty did the Look in Your Bag cartoon which I totally dug, since I spend a large portion of every day looking for things, and the search and re-search of the same damn bag is part of my life.
I think this is a great cartoon. Actually I find it more witty than purely funny, so I came up with a NEW rating for it: WITTY!
This cartoon, I think, gets the Refrigerator honor, the sort of cartoon that people would cut out and put up on the frig, which is a sort of personal cartoon hall of fame.
4
Will McPhail did the never decide what to watch cartoon, which I really liked. I give a Very Funny and more: it is a Booth level cartoon, both funny as hell, and funny even without the caption, which is a Booth hallmark.
Thing is, the cartoon is a bit small on the page or screen, so I enlarged the online view to get a closer look at all the weird stuff going on that competes with the TV. Each of the gonzo things on the living room floor is hysterical to me.
On top of all that good stuff it addresses a common modern life issue: what to watch in streaming age.
Did I say I love this cartoon?
5
Emily Flake did the people around the fire cartoon. Took me a few moments to get this, assuming I do get it. I think it is a scene of modern day horror stories around a campfire, and horror by today’s standards is dressing wrong for middle school. (It always was.)
My problem was that I thought it was a cave-people scene, so I needed to get past that to arrive at campfire scene. My bad?
5
Brendan Loper did the woman caught in her own thoughts cartoon.
Not sure what to make of this and how to react. She is thinking, he is talking, which suggests she is stuck in a bad date, but I’m not getting her circular thinking. Could be just I’m thick.
6
Lonnie Millsap did the two dogs and slippers cartoon. I have a weakness for goofy dogs and goofy dog cartoons and I get the idea but this is one where I suspect there is a funnier caption out there for these two dogs.
7
Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski teamed up for the deli cartoon. No question, I get this. Not super funny but super meaningful.
I associate this with the dreadful political climate of today, but I suppose the same cartoon could have fit right in with the era of Catcher in the Rye.
8
Maddie Dai did the emporers new clothes cartoon which made me snort. Had I been drinking I might have snorted fluid from my schozz.
This works for me on all levels. The drawing is funny without even a caption (Booth!) but somehow the choice of the name Denis in the medieval scene really got me going.
9
David Ostow did offbeat cartoon with two apprentice type angels explaining to God the marketing concept behind dust.
Strikes me that this is another cartoon that could have many different captions, with the two enthusiastic young angels and their boss, but this caption is pretty good.
10
Roz Chast has the pushcart cheese factory outlet cartoon. OK, not her funniest cartoon ever, but funny enough.
11
Avi Steinberg did the goldfish bowl cartoon, which is a great one.
It takes quite a mind to come up with the idea of the goldfish pounding away, underwater, on a typewriter, and then the caption indicates that the couple is not at all surprised that this is going on, just concerned the the book might reveal too much about them.
Astounding, brilliant. Or so I sez.
12
Kendra Allenby did the person on line to enter Hell cartoon.
This is a wonderfully demented cartoon. And the thing that makes me think twice is that the critter on the shoulder of the subject is a little angel, not a little devil.
I can’t quite decipher all the logic, but I like the cartoon.
13
David Sipress did the jailhouse line-up cartoon. Sipress’ book is partially the inspiration for this blog. I can’t ever BE Sipress or a New Yorker cartoonist, but I can horn in on the game with this blog.
There is a leap in this cartoon: the man’s offense toward the woman has leapt from domestic affront to legal offense, which is kinda the point, no?
The Cartoon Caption Contest
The Finalists
None of the suggested whale captions quite floated my boat.
The Winning Caption
Accept All Terms and Conditions is a solid winner for walking into the phone.
Bottom Line
This issue had FOUR very funny ratings and caused me to create the new WITTY rating, had a Booth level cartoon, so all in all, a pretty strong issue.