New Yorker Cartoons
Writing Cartoon Gags For New Yorker
Many years ago when I began drawing and sending out cartoons to various magazines, The New Yorker was one of the publications on my list of markets to show work to. In the 70’s and early 80’s and even into the 1990’s, the single panel magazine gag cartoon was a prominent feature in many regional magazines, trade publications and national magazines. Of this group, The New Yorker magazine published cartoons by so many well known cartoonists such as Charles Saxon, Gahan Wilson, Lee Lorenz, George Booth and so many others too numerous to mention.
A Cartoon Published In New Yorker Elevates Your “Toon Cred”
It probably isn’t fair to even mention the previous names because I’m leaving out so many others who were and still are favorites of mine. For any beginner, or even well established cartoonist, getting a cartoon accepted by The New Yorker elevated your “cartoon cred” big time. As I mentioned, they were on my list of recipients to whom I showed new cartoons as I produced them, along with so many others like Good Housekeeping Magazine (who also used alot of cartoons), Saturday Evening Post (who used many gag cartoons in every issue – and still do), National Lampoon, Saturday Review and so many others.
Setting Up A List Of Editors To Show My Cartoons
By setting up a targeted list and then working up and mixing in a “secondary list” of targeted recipients of your cartoons, you are establishing a good list of potential markets to show your work to. Trade journals were a big part of my repertoire in those days, and in fact at one point I had almost 500 separate farm cartoons mixed into that secondary list of recipients. Say 50 magazines getting anywhere from 10 up to 20 cartoons to consider, along with the proverbial SASE (self addressed stamped envelope) in each “batch” or submission to accommodate the editor in returning my materials.
New Yorker Cartoonist Charles Addams
Ironically not too many years after I began circulating my cartoons to my customized list of recipients, I began receiving encouraging notes from Anne Hall at the art department of New Yorker magazine . I then had a note from her that they wanted the idea from one of my gag panels to give to one of their contract artists. I later discovered it was Charles Addams who re-drew the concept. It was a captionless cartoon (one of my favorite genres to create) that depicted a small rodent in a maze, at an information booth asking for directions. Purchasing ideas for contract artists was another way New Yorker was considered a market by cartoonists at that time and I was assuming more potential sales in the future. Much to my dismay, like alot of other aspects involved in cartooning that cannot be predicted, they dropped this policy but it was cool to have the guy who was the brainchild behind The Addams Family TV series draw one of my concepts.
