Great Cartoonists And Their Art

It’s no secret that most New Yorker readers flip through the magazine to look at the cartoons before they ever lay eyes on a word of the text. But what isn’t generally known is that over the decades a growing cadre of women artists have contributed to the witty, memorable cartoons that readers look forward to each week. Now Liza Donnelly, herself a renowned cartoonist with the New Yorker for more than twenty years, has written this wonderful, in-depth celebration of women cartoonists who have graced the pages of the famous magazine from the Roaring Twenties to the present day. An anthology of funny, poignant, and entertaining cartoons, biographical sketches, and social history all in one, VeryFunny Ladies offers a unique slant on 20th-century and early 21st-century America through the humorous perspectives of the talented women who have captured in pictures and captions many of the key social issues of their time. As someone who understands firsthand the cartoonist’s art, Donnelly is in a position to offer distinctive insights on the creative process, the relationships between artists and editors, what it means to be a female cartoonist, and the personalities of the other New Yorker women cartoonists, whom she has known over the years. Very Funny Ladies reveals never-before-published material from The New Yorker archives, including correspondence from Harold Ross, Katharine White, and many others. This book is history of the women of the past who drew cartoons and a celebration of the recent explosion of new talent from cartoonists who are women. Donnelly interviewed many of the living female cartoonists and some of their male counterparts: Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Amy Hwang, Victoria Roberts, Sam Gross, Lee Lorenz, Michael Maslin, Frank Modell, Bob Weber, as well as editors and writers such as David Remnick, Roger Angell, Lee Lorenz, Harriet Walden (legendary editor Harold Ross’s secretary). The New Yorker Senior Editor David Remnick and Cartoon Editor Emma Allen contributed an insightful foreword. Combining a wealth of information with an engaging and charming narrative, plus more than seventy cartoons, along with photographs and self-portraits of the cartoonists, Very Funny Ladies beautifully portrays the art and contributions of the brilliant female cartoonists in America’s greatest magazine.

A poignant history of the cartoonists and illustrators from the Connecticut School For a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the the nation’s top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut—a bit of bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits. Cullen Murphy’s father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the wildly popular comic strips Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt, and was the heart of this artistic milieu. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group—Superman, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Rip Kirby, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Sam & Silo, Amy, The Wizard of Id, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Family Circus, Joe Palooka, and The Lockhorns, among others. Cartoonists and their art were a pop-cultural force in a way that few today remember. Anarchic and deeply creative, the cartoonists were independent spirits whose artistic talents had mainly been forged during service in World War II. Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, cartoons, and drawings, Cartoon County brings the postwar American era alive, told through the relationship of a son to his father, an extraordinarily talented and generous man who had been trained by Norman Rockwell. Cartoon County gives us a glimpse into a very special community—and of an America that used to be.

We are all critics now. From social media "likes" to reviews on Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, we're constantly asked to give our opinion and offer feedback. Everyone's a Critic is a curated collection of the best and brightest New Yorker cartoonists celebrating the art of the drawn critique, whether about restaurants, art, sports, dates, friends, or modern life. Featuring the work of thirty-six masters of the cartoon, including Roz Chast, Sam Gross, Nick Downes, Liza Donnelly, Bob Mankoff, Michael Maslin, and Mick Stevens, over half the cartoons in this book appear in print for the first time.

A lavishly illustrated, witty, and original look at the awesome power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, Victor S. Navasky knows just how transformative—and incendiary—cartoons can be. Here Navasky guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever created, including those by George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honoré Daumier, and Ralph Steadman. He recounts how cartoonists and caricaturists have been censored, threatened, incarcerated, and even murdered for their art, and asks what makes this art form, too often dismissed as trivial, so uniquely poised to affect our minds and our hearts. Drawing on his own encounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives from cartoon museums across the globe, Navasky examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries. We see afresh images most celebrated for their artistic merit (Picasso's Guernica, Goya's "Duendecitos"), images that provoked outrage (the 2008 Barry Blitt New Yorker cover, which depicted the Obamas as a Muslim and a Black Power militant fist-bumping in the Oval Office), and those that have dictated public discourse (Herblock’s defining portraits of McCarthyism, the Nazi periodical Der Stürmer’s anti-Semitic caricatures). Navasky ties together these and other superlative genre examples to reveal how political cartoons have been not only capturing the zeitgeist throughout history but shaping it as well—and how the most powerful cartoons retain the ability to shock, gall, and inspire long after their creation. Here Victor S. Navasky brilliantly illuminates the true power of one of our most enduringly vital forms of artistic expression.

Learn the basics of cartoon animation from acclaimed cartoon animator Preston Blair! Join acclaimed cartoon animator Preston Blair as he explains and demonstrates the magic of cartoon animation. Learn to develop a cartoon character’s shape, personality, features, and mannerisms; how to create movements, such as walking, running, skipping, and sneaking; and tips on using lines of action and creating realistic motion. From cartooning basics to more advanced animation techniques, Animation 1 is a welcome introduction for artists ready to bring their drawings to life. Designed for beginners, the How to Draw & Paint series offers an easy-to-follow guide that introduces artists to basic tools and materials and includes simple step-by-step lessons for a variety of projects suitable for the aspiring artist. Animation 1 allows artists to widen the scope of their abilities, demonstrating how to animate a character, from character development to movement and dialogue.

The story of screwball comics, with new research and rare art from some of the most hilarious cartoonists of all time. Before "screwball" became a movie genre, it was a staple of other forms of American culture, including newspaper comic strips. Emerging from the pressures of a rapidly accelerating technological and information-drenched society, screwball comics offered a healthy dose of laughter and perspective. The disruptive, manic, and surreal verbal-visual comedy of these "funnies" fostered an absurdist sensibility embraced by The Marx Brothers (who took their names from a popular comic strip), W. C. Fields, Tex Avery, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs, and Mad magazine. Comics scholar Paul C. Tumey traces the development of screwball as a genre in magazine cartoons and newspaper comics, presenting the work of around fifteen cartoonists, with an art-stuffed chapter on each. The book offers a wealth of previously un-reprinted comics unleashing fresh views of some of America's greatest and most-loved cartoonists, including George Herriman (Krazy Kat), E.C. Segar (creator of Popeye), Rube Goldberg (The Inventions of Professor Lucifer G. Butts, A.K.), Bill Holman (Smokey Stover), and Frederick Opper (Happy Hooligan). In addition, readers will be delighted to discover previously "lost" screwball masters, such as Gene Ahern (The Squirrel Cage), Gus Mager (Sherlocko the Monk), Boody Rogers (Sparky Watts), Milt Gross (Count Screwloose), George Swanson ($alesman $am) and others. Both humorous and educational, this book is aimed at a general audience of all ages and at university comics studies programs.

Funny Stuff is a tribute to a unique art form: the single-panel gag cartoon. It looks at why so many of us enjoy cartoons, and what makes for a great cartoon. Authors Phil Witte and Rex Hesner consider how cartoonists can present a complex or odd scenario that we immediately grasp, and what enables us to "get" the humor in a flash. Based on interviews with cartoonist legends--Roz Chast, Sam Gross, Harry Bliss, Joe Dator, Mick Stevens, and many others--Funny Stuff will show how cartoons reveal much about the psyches of their creators. For instance: Roz Chast, known for her neurotic cartoon characters, feared she might die taking a bath because the tub could crash through the floor. The text is abundant with cartoons illustrating the observations of Witte and Hesner. They point to cartoonists who rely on common situations (the desert island, Garden of Eden, hell) and stock characters (the pirate, business executive, scientist), as well as cartoonists who subvert these conventions. They analyze types of humor: absurd, dark, ironic, satirical. They address how the wording of a caption can mean the difference between a cartoon succeeding and almost succeeding, and the extra degree of difficulty required of the caption-less cartoon. They discuss cartooning as an art form, and specifically how the artwork of the best cartoons supports the humor. This book features a foreword written by Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor at The New Yorker and a legend in the cartoon world.