#398: World’s Largest Rubber Ducky Visits New York, My Most Savage Book Review Yet & More!
+ Morris watches the Aussie Olympic Breakdancer on the Big Screen, Ed Sorel breaks my brain, Lauren Layne's Latest & Outdoor Dining Changes in NYC!
Welcome to issue #397 of New York Cartoons!
I’ve just turned in final edits on my book and am ready to collapse into the fetal position with a twitching drawing hand. I’m more exhausted than an Aussie Olympic break-dancer. (Yes, I saw it. Please stop asking me if she’s our Prime Minister.)
In this edition, I’ll be reviewing 2 friends’ books that just came out, and one of them is deeply unkind. I mean, really— I don’t hold back, folks. It’s just savage. Strap in! (and scroll down.)
Books are such a bizarre thing when you really pull the components apart and lay them out on the kitchen table: So many individual things have to line up and go right at the exact same time for things to just go ‘normally’. (Not that this word has any meaning in publishing in 2024.) It’s basically up to the gods at this point whether a book does well.
I got to meet the brilliant
in person at the Hotel Chelsea recently and talk shop (kvetch) about publishing horror stories. If you’re an author, you should subscribe to her must-read newsletter, Books + Publishing). Her insight into the harsh reality of being a full-time writer is a bracing, candid read, but it’s all true. Anyone with the romantic notion of the author's life as some kind of glitzy, unbroken artistic boulevard of green lights should probably signal the waiter to bring Kate’s reality check.Are cartoonists writers? I’m glad you asked. I wrote about it…
Related: Truthfully, I think I’d have drowned myself in waterproof ink by now if it weren’t for my literary agent. We’ve been through a lot together these past few years. I got very lucky! This is all a long-winded way of saying I’m deeply relieved the book is off my drawing board and in the hands of the publisher. You’ll finally get to see it in the Spring of 2025. We’ll be dropping the official cover reveal here soon, and sharing my entire process of making the book over on Process Junkie when my publisher permits me!
…and with that, strap in— Let’s dive into Issue #398!
How one piece of advice from Edward Sorel changed my career and helped me finally find my own style.
Thank you to everyone who jumped on board with my new adventure. If you enjoy the act of making things (with human hands) and geeking out about the nuts and bolts of the creative process, you can sign up here.
In case you missed it, here’s an excerpt from this week’s post:
Strewn around the studio floor and tables were page upon page of vellum with the slightest variations of the same illustration— evidence of an explosive dedication to getting the piece down the way he wanted it. He admitted he was having an unsettling battle. He’d clearly gone a few rounds, but it hadn’t defeated him. There were scraps that he liked. He remained determined.
His commitment to never tracing, never light-boxing, and trying to capture the spontaneity of a pencil sketch in his finished inks is a chief reason his style is so sought-after. It’s also the reason it’s so challenging to turn out work with such energetic quality. It takes a lot of effort to make it look effortless.
…
The next day, Sorel generously took the time to go through a large selection of my art: illustrations, gag cartoons, caricatures, comic strips— the works. I was very anxious to share it with him, but I knew the discomfort would be worth his feedback. It was generous of him to offer.
Once he’d sat with my garbage fire of a portfolio, he gave me the most valuable, candid feedback I’ve ever received as a cartoonist. It sunk into my subconscious and has lived there, rent-stabilized, ever since. I’m sharing it with you because I think it might be helpful for your own development:
He said,
“Jason, I'm overwhelmed by the drawings, not so much by the quantity, as by the number of different styles—everything from broad slapstick to sensitive portraits done with a delicate line.
How do you decide who you're going to be when you get up in the morning?”The last line knocked me back in my chair.
Continue reading:
5 Things of wildly varying importance in New York this week:
1. Written In The Stars
Speaking of writers, one of my closest friends and author of over 40 novels, Lauren Layne (of TheFour), appeared with several authors in Bryant Park last week to share a sneak preview of her latest gem, and answer questions from aspiring writers. [She has a great new online writing course available here.]
The novel just came out this week and is one of LL’s most inventive stories yet— A genuine page-turner. Anyone who has a penchant for accurately-written New York/New Jersey stories, great banter, grumpy artists, and skeptical astrophysicists who swap out Astronomy for Astrology is definitely going to want to buy it. The physics and astrology research alone on this thing must have taken several planetary cycles.
2. Museums In The Mail
I jimmied open my mailbox this week to find another book— this one was sent by
, and boy I just wanted to hate this thing. I mean, who likes museums? And colorfully rendered drawings of museums? Are you kidding me? Yeccch! Get this thing out of my house. I’d have preferred a parcel of anthrax.I stormed onto the sidewalk and hurled it directly into the back of a passing garbage truck, but the guy hanging on the back caught it, threw it back at my head, and screamed, “We don’t want this trash!”
When I came to, I flipped open the first few pages. It made me so mad. I was laying there on the sidewalk in nothing but slippers and a dressing gown for an hour and forty minutes gawking at every spread like a teen discovering his first edition of Hustler. I mean this thing is 175 pages of art and stories about the greatest museums on earth by a New Yorker cartoonist with a foreword from Elizabeth McCracken. It’s apoplexy-inducing! You’ve gotta see it to believe it.
I don’t know if it was the mild concussion setting in, but one enjoyable stand-out was the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY on Page 32. I feel like it’s our comedian version of The Met, with better hot dogs. The Spam Museum in Columbus, Ohio, and the Las Vegas Mob Museum each gave me a full Gee-whizz. Boy was I wrong about this book, folks. I mean, really. What a putz.
Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums is available in Hardcover at all good bookstores, and plenty of terrible ones.
3. Ernie’s gonna need a bigger bathtub
The World’s Largest Rubber Duck visits New York this week, and I’m 100% on board with this new obsession with making gigantic things that tour the country. It makes me a little homesick: my native Australia is ‘famous’ for The Big Prawn, The Big Banana, and the Big Potato, among a slew of Big things people groggily pose in front of during road trips. My hope is that this Big virus spreads around America. Especially Texas.
The 30,000-pound monster, named Mama, will be bringing Big Duck Energy to New York this weekend— you can follow her full schedule here.
4. Outdoor Dining Changes in NYC
There have been big changes brewing in the outdoor dining scene on the Upper West Side due to the city’s new permanent “Dining Out NYC” program. Restaurant owners must comply with new regulations, including retractable roofs. Many already struggling businesses are finding the rules costly and complex. They worry about losing seating capacity and the impact on business, especially as fewer restaurants applied for the new licenses compared to the pandemic peak. I wrote about the new reality of outdoor dining in New York in my piece below:
Curbside dining in New York
The above cartoon appeared out of thick air last month while I was stalking the now-vacant streets of the Flatiron District. Here’s my process for the cartoon from conception ( ooer ) to completion. ( oo-er! )
5. A Collaboration Nobody Asked For
I had a nice surprise from longtime MAD Magazine alum and cartooning teacher at the New York School of Art & Design this week:
occasionally gets me to pop in for a guest ‘lecture’ (ramble) for the students to totally ignore and get on with being way more talented than I was at 17. On this occasion, he used one of my sketches as a jumping-off point for a collaboration that literally nobody asked for…
“WAIT, IS THAT AUSSIE BREAKDANCER CHANELLING ME WHEN I ROLL AROUND ON FRESH GRASS?”
(Photo by Uncle Paulie)
Dammit, Jason! Every time I read one of your posts, you make me want to move back to NYC...at least for the culture and the museums. But alas, here in the culturally bereft Pacific Northwest sticks, I guess I'll just have to settle for buying Bob's book to reminisce over it.
BTW, who knew that Aussie break dancing was so reliant on doing "The Curly Shuffle?"
Jason - have just discovered you as I was wandering through the 'stacks. I'm a cartoonist as well, and have an Australian connection (the short version - born in California to an Australian mum and American dad, then raised in Perth from 3-11-and three-quarters, then moved back to the States [to Idaho!]. Now living in Tokyo.) Really like the style of your work and humour, and have just followed you.
Check me out over at theamazingzootandalgy.substack.com. I'm looking to build the following. I've been creating for about four years now but am still a newbie when it comes to the stacks. Let me know what you think!