I walked past Second Story Books on Dupont Circle yesterday and saw this copy of The Art of Cartooning, usually a $10 book at best, for $1200.

  

As you can see, it's signed by several cartoonists, some of whom have passed away such as Ziegler and Fradon. Still, you could almost recreate this today.

 

Instead I spent $4 on Robert Osborn's How to Shoot Quail from the outside selection. It's beat-up but I enjoyed it.

Next to the Cartooning book was an early, perhaps first edition of the Star Wars novelization for $50.

Yesterday we published some articles on cartoonists from World War II-era Look Magazine. Here's some advertising from the same issues. I can't identify the cartoonist for Aunt Jemima (although the style appears to be lifted from Jimmy Hatlo's They'll Do It Every Time strip) or the Briggs tobacco ads which are signed "F". They're not by Clare Briggs because he was already dead.

Updated 11/23/2017: The Aunt Jemima artist was Dudley Fisher, who did a regularly syndicated single-panel cartoon, “Right Around Home,” featuring multi-generational family members and neighbors in multiple brief conversational exchange against a usually large outdoor (say, neighborhood) setting. Speakers were usually paired; even a dog and cat, or two birds might be interlocutors. —Arthur Vergara

Not Jimmy Hatlo? 12/15/1942

Not Jimmy Hatlo? 4/6/1943

Paul Webb, drawing hillbillies, 4/6/1943

Keith Ward, 2/23/1943. Was Ward only an advertising cartoonist?

R. Taylor, 2/23/1943

Otto Soglow, 2/23/1943

Rube Goldberg, 4/6/1943

Rube Goldberg, 2/23/1943

Richard Decker, 2/23/1943

Richard Decker, 12/15/1942

Briggs tobacco, but not by Clare Briggs, 4/6/1943

Briggs tobacco, but not by Clare Briggs, 2/23/1943

Review of William Steig's book, 2/23/1943

New Yorker cartoonist George Price ad for Chival Regal scotch in Playboy, March 1981. What a wonderful wacky line he has!


Edward Sorel art for an ACLU ad against the Moral Majority in Playboy, March 1981. Oooh, Sorel can be hard-hitting.


Arnold Roth caricature of William Buckley in letters section, Playboy, March 1981. Roth just had a lovely color illo in a recent New Yorker issue.

Jack Davis Dexter shoe ad in Playboy, Dec. 1980. Around this time, Davis seemed to be everywhere. He regularly covered TV Guide, drew a postage stamp, did posters for the American Cancer Society... hard to believe this is almost 30 years ago.



Cassette recorder? What's that? Charles Saxon gag cartoon ad in Playboy, Dec. 1980. Saxon's best known for his New Yorker work.

Actually, the two probably have nothing to do with each other, but Bob Staake, the regular cartoonist for the Washington Post's Style Invitational contest did the cover of the June 2 2008 New Yorker. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's done covers for them regularly including a nice Statue of Liberty with a fluorescent light bulb instead of a torch earlier this year.

I must confess that I was completely unfamiliar with Mohassess's work, but there's an exhibit of it in New York city. See Life in Iran, Etched With Suspicion and Humor By KAREN ROSENBERG, New York Times May 30, 2008. In Ardeshir Mohassess’s drawings, the coded beauty of traditional Persian art comes face to face with the ugliness of successive autocratic regimes.

and "Satire, Iranian," by Ben McGrath, New Yorker June 2, 2008

Well, Richard wasn't in yesterday's Post Health section so I guess his plan for taking over the Post is going a little more slowly than I expected. However, he did have a caricature in the July 2nd New Yorker, the one with the nice Staake Statue of Liberty cover.

Bob Mankoff gave a very interesting talk today at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of their Steinberg exhibit. The talk was held in the lovely new auditorium apparently buried under the former courtyard. Mr. Mankoff talked about Steinberg's early cartoons for the New Yorker (which can be seen on the Complete New Yorker Cartoons cd), Steinberg's influence on his early work, and the nature of gag cartoons and humor. Mankoff said that the Caption Contest gets about 10,000 entries per week and showed a slide of how he and his assistants break up the entries to make sense of them. He had a lot of interesting points to make, and the working cartoonists I was sitting with, AAEC head Rob Rogers, Matt Wuerker, Nick Galifianakis and Richard Thompson all seemed engaged. I certainly was, but I'm not a professional cartoonist.

Crawford cartoon to illustrate the nature of humor.

Some of the 10,000 entries to the New Yorker Cartoon Contest sorted into categories.

Sample page of Cartoon Bank database.

Afterwards Mr. Mankoff signed books including the New Yorker Book of Art Cartoons. In the accompanying pictures (below), Warren Bernard gets confirmation that four books is the complete set of Mankoff books, and gets them all signed at one fell swoop. Mankoff said that he didn't even have copies of them all anymore.




The rain started in earnest so Rob Rogers invited Mr. Mankoff to the museum's cafe with us and we had a fun hour hearing stories of the New Yorker, and talking shop. Matt stood us all to drinks, and Rob picked up the chips - thanks guys! One point Mankoff did make was that by animating cartoons, the Cartoon Bank could pick up new sponsors like Lexus - here's an example that Richard found.

Rob Rogers, Matt Wuerker, Bob Mankoff, Richard Thompson and Nick Galifianakis talking in the museum lobby after the booksigning.

Rob Rogers forcibly suggests that Bob Mankoff might not want to go out in that rain.

The last two photos are everyone in the cafe. Richard's in the blue denim shirt, Nick's in blue shirt with long hair, Matt's in the brown jacket, Rob's in the dark blue jacket and Bob Mankoff's in the suit. This was a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday. Matt wrote down the best epigraphs from the talk, and hopefully one of the others will flesh out this entry a bit.

New Yorker cartoonist and comics editor Bob Mankoff will be at the Saul Steinberg exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The free program is at 3 pm on Sunday