It is very important that you read this comic by Emily Flake (you can already see the initial attraction) right now. Don’t worry, most of them are PG-13. Here are the archives from the Baltimore City Paper. And here’s a handy Best of Lulu Eightball, compiled by crown prince of hippo painters El Rey Del Art, who tipped me off to the wonders of the Flake and calls Eightball “my new favorite comic.” Which, for him, is really saying something. I am so pleased about this. The above comic is a good companion to John Colapinto’s recent leech story, too.

Update: I’ve read nearly all the archives now and need art methadone. Since Flake reminds me a little of classic Lynda Barry, I think it’s time for Girls and Boys and Big Ideas. Ah. That’s better. Now more Flake, please. Wait—there’s a book. I can already feel the shakes subsiding. You’d buy it, too, if you knew what was good for you.

Update update: I just noticed this interview with E.F. in the City Paper. So:

CP: So why do you draw yourself like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s indie-rock girlfriend?

EF: What? Oh, God, maybe I kind of am the Pillsbury Doughboy’s indie-rock girlfriend. That’s kind of fucked-up, that might be true. Well, the drawing style doesn’t really lend itself to making anyone look attractive. And I think it’s funnier—well, somebody wrote in once saying more or less that he hated my cartoons because everything was kind of sad, that it wasn’t a real go-getter’s cartoon. And the only thing I could think was, How would it be funny if it was?

Categories: Cartoons, Books, Art

Not to be confused with Curry in a Hurry. Supercartoonist Matt Diffee joins the always bewitching Andrea Rosen at her (and Chelsea Peretti, Heather Lawless, and Shonali Bhowmik’s) Variety Shac at Galapagos, this Tuesday night the 2nd at 8 p.m. Free. I’ll be there. Get your Brooklyn visa stamp and you can be too. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s not going to be superb comedy humor. I saw Diffee at the Rejection Show (where Rosen also read) not long ago, and he made everyone laugh, on purpose and repeatedly.

Update: Eric Lewis was also there to show his drawings, both rejected and accepted; both he and Diffee were charming. Watch this space for the caption to a cartoon that Lewis can’t seem to sell, although it brought the house down.

Categories: Cartoons, Diffee, Extracurriculars, Events

Here’s Bruce Eric Kaplan in a rather darker mood (if that’s possible) than he is in his NYer cartoons. Long may his people snarl.

Categories: BEK, Cartoons, Extracurriculars

From Denver’s Craigslist:

Do you play the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest? – 52

looking for signs of intelligent life…you…fem 45-55, youthful, smart, fit, attractive, stable, european…n/s

This woman has taste, Coloradans! The new drawing is pretty straight, but agreeably kinky, at least. And you’ll have something to agree on the first time you meet: the current entries are blech. The third entry (“Frankly, your brochure is a bit misleading,” Richard Woodward, Clemson, S.C.) is the only funnyish one, so I hope you both vote for that before you take your moonlit walk on the beach. Is there a beach in Denver? You tell me, lovebirds. And the new winner, Bob Schwartz of Cincinnati, wasn’t my pick but is perfectly adequate and will provide plenty of heated, that is to say hot, political debate between the two of you. May you get oodles of dates, Ms. X, and may you and your new sweetie submit some captions that are better than this lot.

Categories: NYer, Cartoons, Contest

Earlier this week WBUR Boston had a show about the traveling New Yorker covers exhibit, with guests Lee Lorenz (former art and cartoon editor and author of The Art of The New Yorker: 1925-1995, Francoise Mouly, current art editor, and superstar Maira Kalman. Listen!

Categories: NYer, Covers, Radio

From “The Disney Strike of 1941: How It Changed Animation & Comics,” by Tom Sito:

As Walt Disney turned his fashionable Packard roadster onto Buena Vista Blvd. he found the entrance to his studio ringed with a mob of 300 picketers and reporters. The protesters were his own cartoonists. Every couple of feet one stood on a soapbox and made angry speeches to passing picketers. Under the clear blue skies colorfully handpainted signs bobbed: DISNEY UNFAIR!, ONE GENIUS vs. 600 GUINEA PIGS, WE HAD NO SCABS AT SCHLESINGER’S, LEONARDO, MICHELANGELO and TITIAN WERE UNION MEN, and a picture of Pluto with the title, I’D RATHER BE A DOG THAN A SCAB!

No single incident had a greater impact upon the history of Hollywood animation than the Great Walt Disney Cartoonists Strike of 1941. The Disney Strike spawned new studios, new creative styles, new characters and changed animation forever. To the people who were there, it was a defining moment in their careers. New friendships were cemented and old ones broken. Many carried their anger for the rest of their lives.

It was the Civil War of Animation.
…
Assistant animator Hank Ketcham was a striker. He said, “Although I was young, single and with no heavy commitments it was obvious that the Kansas City Mouseketeer had to loosen his purse strings or perish.” Meanwhile his roommate, Dick Kinney, was for Walt because Kinney’s brother, Jack, was a supervising director. Driving his old Mercury convertible, Kinney would drop Hank off a block from the studio and proceed through the jeering strikers’ line while Hank would check in with the organizers and shoulder his picket sign.

But after a while Ketcham was put off by the strike leaders increasingly militant tone. Stories about the violent strikes at General Motors and other industrial debacles. He felt had nothing to do with him as an artist. He crossed the line and went back to work. For this he was labeled by his buddies, “The King of Finks.”

After the strike Ketcham went into the Navy Reserve and served as a photographic retoucher. In his spare time he started to sell some comic panels. After his discharge he drifted to New York City to try his hand doing spot cartoons for the New Yorker, where his former Disney strikers Sam Cobean and Claude Smith had become top artists. He had a son named Dennis who liked to smear his room with the contents of his loaded diaper. His wife exclaimed to him, “Your son is a menace!” This gave him an idea. He created the character Dennis the Menace in 1947 and the strip appeared in newspapers in 1951.

Walt Kelly was an animator and story artist on Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi. He was fired by Disney after the 90-day federal period was over. He went home to Connecticut and found work as a political cartoonist for the New York Sun, which soon went under. He got work for Western Publishing drawing for several comicbooks including some Walt Disney comicbooks.

In 1943 Kelly created Bumbazine and Albert the Alligator, which appeared in issue number one of Animal Comics. Its story, called “Albert Takes the Cake,” started “Once there was a big old alligator named Albert who loved chocolate cake…” This was the basis of Pogo. Pogo went mainstream in 1950 and became one of America’s most beloved comics. He married another striker named Margaret Selby Daley who became Selby Kelly. Will be that was.

The Disney Strike of 1941: How It Changed Animation & Comics [Mickey News via Animation World]

Therefore posts will be sporadic this week, but I’m happy to report that I spoke to current caption-contest champ and all-around peach Jan Richardson in Ridgeland, Miss., about clown dating, Victoria Roberts, and the varied (but mostly good) reactions to her killer caption, “He’s the cutest little thing, and when you get tired of him you just flush him down the toilet.” Watch for the mini-interview here in coming days. In the meantime, get to the movies—nobody can be expected to do anything else in this weather.

Categories: NYer, Cartoons, Contest

This week’s caption entries are in (for this contest—updated link), and miracle of miracles, two out of three are so good I’m finding it hard to choose:

“I’m beginning to think I liked you better when you worked at Morgan Stanley.”
Submitted by John Mariani
Tuckahoe, N.Y.

“I told you not to bring the clown!”
Submitted by Max Brooks
Chicago, Ill.

“Well, if you must know, he makes me laugh.”
Submitted by Jacqueline Tager
Hollywood, Calif.

The second two are the picks in question, of course. The first is just a cheap shot; the second gets at the strange dark heart of clowns, as in Stephen King and John Wayne Gacy, Jr., the one real clowns (and I know) hate so much to hear about. The third is just great psychological evil. Men have been winning, for the most part (I may be wrong, so I’ll double-check to ward off squawks from fact-checking fiends), so I think—though it’s tough—that I’ll go with Tager’s entry. Seriously funny, this collection, and it can only mean good things for the contest’s future. Go and vote before you forget!

I’m pleased to report that once again, my pick has won the current contest, Victoria Roberts Fishbowl Couple. Congratulations, Jan Richardson of Ridgeland, Miss. (Kenyon ’85), on “He’s the cutest little thing, and when you get tired of him you just flush him down the toilet”! Delicious. For the new contest, let’s christen the bird the Hornby Pigeon in honor of A Long Way Down, which I liked very much and the Times did not, although I believe the reviewer in question (one M.K., not to be confused with Mary-Kate Olsen, although there was a juvenile quality to this particular review that might warrant making the comparison) did not actually read much of Hornby’s novel, or at least not very closely. Oh well, not everyone likes suicide fantasias. Those who do should read the Hornby, then write in with a suitably funny-sad caption. I’m glad to see pigeons getting their say in the media after all the abuse they take, so give them the voice they deserve.

The contest has the potential to bring out a non-major-league-sports form of regional pride, and there have already been some good moments in local-caption-writer-makes-good. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Congratulating cleverness: Rachel Kirkwood of Lexington, you’re so clever. Her caption is a finalist in a New Yorker magazine cartoon caption contest. To vote, check out www.newyorker.com/captioncontest, contest No. 9. Deadline is Sunday.

As you know, Kirkwood’s caption—”What’s more important, youthful hair or F.D.A. approval?”—is also my pick. May the best Kentuckian win. Vote now before you leave work. Just because we lost the 2004 election doesn’t mean we have to lose again every week till the end of time. Feel the democracy. It helps.

Categories: NYer, Cartoons, Contest