How Were the Contest Cartoons Captioned Before the Winners Captioned Them?

As usual, Daniel Radosh is on the cutting edge of this question. For Radosh’s site, which provides (thanks to his admirably perverse readers) parallel-universe captions from the smutty to the surreal and everywhere in between, cartoonist and Rejection Collection editor Matt Diffee will be surveying his comrades-in-art and finding out what handwritten line of whimsy went with the original drawing submission that then, later, became a caption-contest challenge. I do know the original caption to Drew Dernavich’s lifeguard cartoon, but I’ll let Radosh do the honors. Speaking of the contest, I just discovered this site full of suggested captions and contest information (Michael Shaw, is this yours? I can’t figure it out!). Speaking of cartoonists, you’ll want to listen to Gahan Wilson and Bob Mankoff chatting about Wilson’s unmonstrous but excellent adventures in life and monster-drawing at the New Yorker website. Speaking of New Yorker cartoons in general, here’s a useful mini-collection of resources about the submission process. And speaking of wit writ large and small, I can’t believe the central Onion HQ is moving to Chicago; I read the paper faithfully in its fledgling years in Madison, my proud and good-humored hometown.