First New Yorker cartoonist Matt Diffee pissed off Scranton, PA, although I think they forgave him eventually.
Now, Paul Noth (whom you may know as one of the masterminds behind Conan O’Brien’s Pale Force, among other things) has rattled Sheboygan with a cartoon that, as the local paper puts it, “depicts an expansive suburban landscape with a long wall meandering through it with the caption: ‘The Great Drywall of Sheboygan.'” For its part, Dubuque, which can surely take its New Yorker association for granite (as Pogo would say), seems a little miffed at being left out.
Who’s next? Martin, want to investigate which other town names have been mentioned in cartoons? (Who could forget Roz Chast’s DKNJ?) And what happens if the cartoonist is pardoned? Does he or she get a two-dimensional, Flat Stanley/Harold-esque key to the city, maybe?

From MinOnline (mysterious itals in original):

“With today’s (February 4) release of the February 11-18 anniversary issue, current editor (since July 1998) David Remnick goes a politically correct (if you’re a Democrat) step further with what he and his staff are calling Eustace Tillarobama. Split-run (above left) has either Hillary or Barack on the top, and distribution to subscribers is random. Perfect timing before tomorrow’s (February 5) Super Tuesday primaries, when, perhaps, one of them will really be on top. Artists are Rea Irvin and Seth (no last name).

Here’s the online portfolio of neo-Tilley winners at newyorker.com, not to mention a swell audio conversation about the contest with Françoise Mouly and Matt Dellinger. As Mouly reminds us, should you be tempted to forget, Rea Irvin was kidding around the first time. (Maybe even more than we knew!)

Perhaps not, but it’s certainly worth a try. Click through to Boing Boing for details of the magazine’s new online competition, the results of which are sure to be a monocled, lepidopteran hoot.
The contest is being held on Flickr rather than newyorker.com; the image specs and rules appear there and also here. The group has 32 members so far, including me.
Over on Flog!, by the way, Fantagraphics maestro Eric Reynolds makes a sly reference in his report on the contest by heading his post “Johnny Ryan, are you reading?” I shall explain: Ryan, author of the singularly disgusting yet strangely mesmerizing Angry Youth Comix, included a nearsighted, um, awe-inducing character he called The New Yorker in a recent edition. I will append only three very tame panels from the storyline after the jump; pursue this further at your own risk.

Click to enlarge; reprinted with permission. Caveat lector!

Please get in touch! As you recall, you won Cartoon Caption Contest #2, the Leo Cullum drawing, with “This is my stop. Phil, you’ll be C.E.O. till Sixty-third Street.” We’re sad that we hadn’t yet started doing detailed interviews with caption winners, and we’d (specifically, a writer we just persuaded to do an interview, and who picked you specifically as an interview subject) love to talk to you in a friendly and nonthreatening manner. Alternately, if you work at the Cartoon Bank and have Lewis Gatlin’s email address, or if you’re Leo Cullum and you’d like to chat with us as well, we’d love that, too!

As promised, today Daniel Radosh presents the results of Matt “Rejection Collection” Diffee’s caption-contest investigation: What were the original captions before they were stripped to make way for America’s merry endeavors? Drew Dernavich (who chatted with the contest winner about the “Everyone knows your parrot’s a clip-on” drawing for Emdashes) contributes two, and Tom Cheney and Frank Cotham have one each. I especially like the amusing juxtaposition of the winning, Radosh Anti-Caption Contest, and original captions.
Also in humor today, the latest edition of thoroughly lovable comedian Mike Birbiglia’s “My Secret Public Journal” has a sharp election-season observation:

Rudy Giuliani kind of scares me. I kind of feel like Rudy thinks 9/11 is his birthday. He gets that excited look on his face and buys himself a cake and lights two candles and watches them burn down. And then he looks around and says, “What do I get?” And his advisors are like “$15 million in speaking fees!” and he’s like, “That’s even better than last 9/11!”

And in the Wall St. Journal, there’s a review of William F. Buckley’s book Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription that parades some New Yorker cliches so sleepy they’re unfit to operate heavy machinery. If you say only three things about the magazine, say these three! It’s a surefire crowd-pleaser.