tomorrow in his hometown paper, the Scranton Times-Tribune. Longtime New Yorker cartoonist Reilly died last month.

Update: Here it is: Drawn from life: The late Donald Reilly’s career at the New Yorker.

Continuing in the tradition of interviewing caption contest winners (to which I’ve contributed toot toot), the Des Moines Register interviews recent contest winner Tim McDaniel of Alta, Iowa, whose angry-fish caption for P.C. Vey’s cartoon is genuinely, classically funny, a candidate for the “best of the New Yorker caption contest cartoons” anthology that may, for all I know, be forthcoming. Or even for a regular anthology. I approve.

The headline for Ken Fuson’s story is one of the best I’ve seen, and fits so well into the Vey-McDaniel theme: “Iowan thinks, types, wins! And stirs jealousy.”

Related: All the cartoon caption contest coverage you could ever dream of.

Speaking of cartoons, alumni magazines (a favorite genre of mine, as some of you know) love to profile cartoonist graduates, especially when they make it to the Show. Here’s longtime quality starter—and retired pilot!—Leo Cullum, Holy Cross ’63, in an entertaining and in-depth profile in Holy Cross Magazine. From the story (forgive me, no time to add itals, but will insert soon!):

Finding he had plenty of spare time between flights and during layovers, Cullum revived his old interest in art. He took a couple of painting classes and developed an interest in cartooning.

“It looked like something I could do,” he says. “I bought some instructional books which explained the format, and I began studying the work of various cartoonists.”

At that time Manhattan was the Mecca of cartooning, and every Wednesday Cullum and other cartoonists, both neophyte and established, would make the pilgrimage to those cartoon editors who traditionally held an open house that day.

“The first time I drew a batch of cartoons and took them to the city, I met a number of the artists I had been studying,” Cullum says. “It was enormous fun for me, and, though I didn’t sell anything, I did receive some encouragement from some editors. I was hooked.”

In 1973, TWA transferred Cullum to Los Angeles. He took up residence in Malibu and continued to draw cartoons when he wasn’t flying.

“I think what I loved about trying to create a cartoon was the writing at least as much as the drawing,” Cullum says. “Trying to think of a funny or pithy comment came naturally to me and here was a chance to put it to use.”

Soon he was actually selling cartoons. His first was to Air Line Pilot Magazine. Cullum’s cartoons also showed up in True, Argosy, The Saturday Evening Post and Sports Afield.

“It didn’t take long to realize that, both in terms of prestige and money. the place to be was The New Yorker,” he says. “At that time The New Yorker used gag writers, and, though my drawings were rejected on a weekly basis, they eventually started buying some of my ideas and pairing me with Charles Addams.”

In 1977, the magazine bought one of Cullum’s cartoons, and pretty soon he was a regular.

“The New Yorker, did not, as is widely supposed, invent the magazine cartoon,” Mankoff says, “but, between the late 1920s and the mid 1930s, it certainly perfected it and made it part of American and, then, world culture. We’re proud of that tradition and intend to maintain it. As long as we have cartoonists like Leo Cullum, I don’t think we’ll have anything to worry about.”

I’m sure this has been around for a while and I haven’t noticed it, but when I was voting for Harry Effron and his hilariously apt and democratically triumphant anti-caption-turned-real-caption, this offer turned up in the thank-you page:

If you can’t read printing that small, it says “Purchase this cartoon with the caption you voted on as a matted print for only $49.95 now.” So now you can have the caption you were rooting for, and the non-winners can be satisfied that their captions really were the most fitting, forevermore. Nice move, Cartoon Bank!

Update: I see you can also order a cartoon with your own caption. That’s probably been around for a while, too. I’m adjusting to working full-time again, folks; this is how things get missed!

If you’re curious about how the winning caption evolved for another inspired Drew Dernavich contest cartoon, the exclusive interview is here, and continues right here.

by The Conservative Voice, commenting on Spiegelman’s June Harper’s piece on the infamous Mohammed cartoons:

Spiegelman lives in Manhattan and works for the New Yorker, which provides a clue to his multiculti leanings. Obviously, he does not believe that Muslims are the unassimilable Other despite the overwhelming evidence of what is happening to his beloved Europe. Sun Tzu counseled, “Know thy enemy,” but whole classes of endangered species, specifically our Euro-leaning liberal elite, continue to view Islam through the prism of diversity where no culture can be recognized superior to any other. Friday night Seder is the same as some spiritual leader performing a clitorectomy on a teen-age girl with a sharpened rock.
…
At least Spiegelman is upfront about where he’s coming from. “As a secular Jewish cartoonist living in New York City, I start out with four strikes against me, but I really don’t want any irate Muslims declaring holy war on me. (Although I’m not at all religious, I am a devout coward.)” (Emphasis Spiegelman’s) This is perhaps the most honest statement in the essay, and could just as well serve as the motto of the New York Times.

Google Alerts, which doesn’t always have a bias toward the present (very sensible of it), pointed me to “A Sort of Neighbor Remembers Shawn,” a 1993 letter to the Times following William Shawn’s obituary:

To the Editor:

“William Shawn, 85, Is Dead; New Yorker’s Gentle Despot” (front page, Dec. 9) reminded me of the time in 1972 that I noticed Mr. Shawn’s entry just above mine in Who’s Who.

Quixotically, I submitted a short story directly to him, pointing out that we were neighbors of a sort and hoping he would like my piece, which was based on a military situation I had covered for Life magazine as a young reporter.

On a standard New Yorker rejection slip that came back with my story, Mr. Shawn had scrawled: “Try Shawcross.”

I had no idea what he meant until some months later, when I was proudly showing my Who’s Who entry to my daughter, I noticed that the neighbor just north of William Shawn was Lord Shawcross of Friston, the renowned English barrister and writer, Britain’s chief representative at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials.

However, I refrained from troubling this other distinguished neighbor of mine.

ARTHUR SHAY
Deerfield, Ill., Dec. 10, 1992

If you’ve got a TimesSelect credit to spend, here is the obituary itself. From the story:

Mr. Shawn had long been a fascinated reader of The New Yorker, and in time the Shawns moved to New York. Once there, he began doing reporting assignments for the magazine’s Talk of the Town section.

“I was paid $2 an inch when the piece appeared,” he later said. “It was practically starvation. After a while they let me come into the office and work.”

As time passed, the boyish-looking reporter became known as a prodigy of conscientiousness and organization. In 1935, he turned his hand to editing, although he still wanted to write.

Mr. Shawn worked extremely hard in those days, but he also enjoyed relaxing. “About once a month we’d have a party and about 30 or 40 people would show up,” The New Yorker veteran E. J. Kahn Jr. wrote in his book “About the New Yorker and Me.” “Shawn was our star. He’d be our piano player.”

Why had I never absorbed that before? So let’s review: Shawn played the piano, Lee Lorenz played the trombone (and later the trumpet), and the late Donald Reilly played the trombone as well. How many others were there? Besids the sprightly Dougless Trio, is there now or has there ever been a New Yorker orchestra? I think I’ve got my own question for the column.

Wait a minute—I don’t have my Atlantic subscriber info here to check this, but this turned up on Google:

Sitting In – 98.01
It included mainly New Yorker people — Wally White (piano), Paul Brodeur (clarinet), Donald Reilly (trombone), Warren Miller (trumpet), Lee Lorenz (trumpet) …
www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jan/jazz.htm

Obviously this must be followed up on.

It’s been a busy week, so I’m glad that Blog About Town and The Comics Reporter made mention earlier this week of the sad news that longtime New Yorker cartoonist Donald Reilly has died. The magazine’s website has already put up “The Life of Reilly,” an elegant five-minute slide show about his life and work, engagingly narrated by Reilly’s former editor and fellow jazz horn player Lee Lorenz. It has some great images (photos, cartoons, and covers) along with anecdotes and detail about Reilly’s technique, “tough-minded” sense of humor, and transitions in cartooning methods at the magazine. Looking through the slide show and the Cartoon Bank images, I’m struck by how consistently funny Reilly’s drawings and captions are through the decades, and how even his slyest jokes seem to draw on a genuine sympathy for humanity that isn’t, as we know, a given.

From the Times obituary:

Mr. Reilly, who began drawing for The New Yorker in 1964, did 1,107 cartoons and 16 covers for the magazine. His work also appeared in Playboy, Colliers, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Mad, Harvard Business Review and elsewhere.

Mr. Reilly’s artwork, typically line drawings with a touch of wash, was known for its directness, said Lee Lorenz, a former art editor of The New Yorker.

“Most artists sketch things out, make preliminary drawings,” Mr. Lorenz said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Don liked his work to be as spontaneous as possible, and he was one of the few artists who would sit down and just do a drawing.”

Together with their captions, which Mr. Reilly wrote himself, the drawings are anthropology in microcosm. Over the years, he wryly dissected the manners and customs of Homo sapiens, among them yuppie tastes (“I’m thirsty,” one tot says to another. “What kind of water does your mother buy?”); mating rituals (“I think we’re getting serious,” a young man confides to his friend. “She’s springing for a credit check and a surveillance on me”); and even euthanasia (“Yes, Oregon’s lovely, but we’re just here for the suicide”).

One well-known drawing, from 1994, depicts a distraught cat on a psychiatrist’s couch. The caption: “To this day, I can hear my mother’s voice — harsh, accusing. ‘Lost your mittens? You naughty kittens! Then you shall have no pie!’ “

Mr. Reilly’s most recent New Yorker cartoon was published on March 13 of this year. It shows one penguin addressing another, who is suavely attired in sunglasses. “Oh, get over yourself,” the first penguin says. “We were all in the movie.”
…
On at least one occasion, Mr. Reilly’s work influenced public policy, albeit briefly. In 1984, the town council of Garrett Park, Md., voted to install a traffic sign at a troublesome intersection. The sign, taken straight from one of Mr. Reilly’s New Yorker cartoons, read: “At Least Slow Down (formerly STOP).”

It was too good to last. “It’s been gone some time,” Ted Pratt, the town administrator of Garrett Park, said in an interview yesterday. “It got stolen so many times, they gave up.”

Later: Here is the notice placed in the Times by Reilly’s family, which includes memorial contribution information.

Donald Reilly
REILLY-Donald, 72, husband of Kathleen Collins Reilly, died from cancer on June 18, 2006, in Norwalk, CT. A prolific cartoonist and cover artist for “The New Yorker” since the early 1960’s, Donald was also a contributor to publications as diverse as “MAD” magazine and “The Harvard Business Review,” among them “Look,” “Colliers,” “Playboy,” and “The Saturday Review.” As a teenager, Donald got his start at what would become a sideline for most of his life, playing jazz trumpet, trombone, and flugelhorn. Born November 11, 1933, in Scranton, PA, Donald grew up principally in Allentown, PA, and was the son of the late Helen and William F. Reilly. He graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1955 and from the Art School at Cooper Union in 1963. Donald’s survivors, in addition to his wife, are his children, Patricia, Brian, and Michael, as well as Kathleen’s children, Robert, John, and Maura Williams, and their spouses. Donald is also survived by his sister, Helene Fagan. His sister Jane Gallo predeceased him. Donald leaves eight grandchildren: Hanna, Liza, Michael, Henry, Maggie, John, Michael, and Daniel. Family and friends will meet on Saturday, June 24, at 4 PM at the Williams residence, 223 Chestnut Hill Road, Wilton, CT. For information: Harding Funeral Home in Westport, CT, Memorial contributions may be made to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, New York 11245.

Donald Reilly cartoons [Cartoon Bank]

Oh, David Marc Fischer, you clever thing! Here’s the full map, and David’s analysis. There are lots of East Coasters, as you might expect, but some Westies, too (that’s actually the name for West Coast swing dancers, who may or may not be caption contest winners, but it’s a useful term; plus, Westies wear funny outfits to dance in, which is probably also true of many Californians), and a pretty respectable smattering in between. Of course, this map only underscores the grievous truth that Canadians are not allowed to enter. If people in Canada could enter the caption contest, they wouldn’t be mixing up explosives, now, would they. They’re known to be funnier than us—are we threatened?

While you’re revisiting your fuzzy (in whatever sense) memories of caption contests past, pay a visit to some of the winners to whom I’ve posed incredibly serious questions: T.C. Doyle, Adam Szymkowicz and Szymkowicz again, Drew Dernavich (who is, of course, a New Yorker cartoonist), Evan Butterfield, Jan Richardson, and our very own Roy Futterman.

Once you’re done reading the Matthew Barney profile from the New Yorker archives, read my arty friend Paddy’s funny review of Barney’s new movie:

The jelly scenes are a rehashing of more successful work in the Cremaster series, and the commitment ceremony violates some of the most fundamental principles of sound art making practice, namely that if you are Matthew Barney you should NEVER EVER use CGI. Barney has no aptitude with digital mediums, and has demonstrated this both in Cremaster 3, when he used an animation program to spin a ribbon falling from the top of the Empire State building, thereby cheesifing what would have been a nearly perfectly visually contructed movie (speaking strickly of the first half), and in Drawing Restraint 9 where any underwater shot he’s made looks stupid because the computer generated images are poorly excecuted and he has chosen to render something in a medium that makes no sense relative to his larger working process. Here’s all of it.

Event reminder:

You can still get a ticket for the Ed Koren, Barbara Smaller, and David Sipress conversation at Makor—this is a great series. Buy tickets and get more info here, or just hustle up to Makor for funny people and wine (included in the price of admission).

Click to enlarge.

Update: What a fun afternoon-to-evening—well organized, thoughtful, and totally entertaining. The Makor audience certainly knew its New Yorker cartoons (could you identify a Booth line from a single squiggle?), but the event wasn’t bathed in nostalgia. In fact, the conversation turned into a meditation on how cartoonists negotiate particularly unfunny times and learn how to turn anxiety and disgruntlement (or as we say in my family, being grundled—disgruntlement + Pogo‘s Grundoon) into wit. Koren, Smaller, and Sipress were warm, self-deprecating, and admirably articulate, and I’m looking forward to talking to all of them again. Fuller report to follow, but don’t miss the next one! The wine was good, too.