#339: Book Release Day Special Edition! The New Yorker Excerpt, Sketchbook Madness, & NYC gets Blanketed in Orange Smoke

Plus! Toonstack, the New Yorker Softball VS. Rolling Stone, and more!

I hope you’ve had a quietly epic start to the week…

The new book is now officially out in the world! This past week the New Yorker ran an excerpt, rocketing our baby into the best-sellers list on Amazon under both Humorous Graphic Novels & Comic Strips before we even launched!

Thank you to all of you who pre-ordered the book. I’m really happy with how it came out after years of working at the drawing board, developing the idea from concept to creation. It might just be the best thing I’ve ever done. If you haven’t yet, there’s still time to order a copy in time for Father’s Day!

To give you a sense of the malarkey on the pages inside:

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

The families of characters in the book were not designed to be your average cookie-cutter 1950s nuclear family.

There are as many ways to parent a child as there are stars in the sky, so we very deliberately worked to try and reflect the vast variety of parenting backgrounds that exist in the modern-day. We felt that the characters we wanted to show in the book would have to be encountering all the same kinds of tribulations while remaining as different as possible if they were going to be… well, real!

Not all parents are married, not all parents are raising their kids with a partner, not all parents come from the same countries, cultures, races, religions, sexual orientations, or backgrounds —and they don’t all have the same ideas about how to raise their kids.

The book doesn’t just cover babies: it covers the full lifelong commitment of parenting: from babies to toddlers, tweens, teens, and beyond…

We had a lot of fun exploring these dynamics in narrowing down the final 100 jokes in the book from hundreds more. —oh, and they all return for more appearances in the second book, You’re Not A Real Dog-Owner Until… Coming in Fall this year.

LIMITED OFFER: Become a paid subscriber for just $1.25 a week and I’ll send you a signed copy with a custom cartoon for free! (Offer expires June 30th, US/Canada only.)

The book is available in US/Canada only for now, but please drop me a line if you’re interested in getting a copy, and I’ll see what we can figure out!

---

---

Each week the New Yorker softball team meets at the softball diamond in Central Park and plays people who work at other magazines and media organizations based in New York. I am probably the least valuable member of the team, with the pitching arm of an old chair and the knees of a septuagenarian. That said, I do bring the beer…

Each week this season, I’ll give you a brief update on how the game went.

06/06: The New Yorker VS. Rolling Stone VS. Smoke

Last week New York was cosplaying as a regular Australian summer season, wearing a thick, orange bushfire smoke costume and sending New Yorkers into a coughing mess.

Just as the smoke crept across the Canadian border on Tuesday afternoon, the New Yorker softball team strolled lungs-first into our game against Rolling Stone, squinting through the thick plumes, and sending pitch after pitch into the hazy abyss.

The New Yorker did… not do well. We lost. By a lot.
The winner from very early on was Rolling Stone. And emphysema.

If you’d like to come and cheer us on one night in Central Park, our Season for 2023 will be as follows:

05/30: New Yorker vs. WNYC

06/06: New Yorker vs. Rolling Stone

06/13: New Yorker vs. Paris Review

06/20: New Yorker vs. The Drift

06/27: New Yorker vs. New York Review of Books

07/11: New Yorker vs. Slate (@ Prospect Park)

07/17: New Yorker vs. New York Magazine (@ James J. Walker Park)

07/25: New Yorker vs. Eater

08/01: New Yorker vs. Vanity Fair

As always, thank you for being a subscriber and reading my silly cartoons.

Your pal,

Jason

“Can I order the ‘Good Boy Special please?”

If you enjoy my work, then there’s a fair chance you might like the people I enjoy too. Each week I will be sharing a new person who tickles my fancy.

Toonstack!

I know, I know, Toonstack isn’t a person. It’s a collection of people— but they’re my favorite people, and I think they’ll quickly become yours, too.

I got to guest edit this week’s edition and just for a change, I thought I’d mention the book…

Each week, New Yorker cartoonists come together to post their favorite cartoons on a specific topic and write a little something about it under each one. Toonstack features a broad array of styles from a collection of ridiculously talented cartoonists. I got to guest edit this week’s edition, which you can find below.