#420. Rodneys Sketchbook, New Yorkers Comedy Show, Railing Against Subway Crime & More!
+ Do cartoons have to be funny? and Morris reveals his winter look.
Welcome to issue #420 of New York Cartoons.
Am I going to make a 420 joke somewhere in this week’s issue? No, I want to keep my standards high. Sorry to be so blunt. I am, however, going to keep you apprised of the various goings on here in New York, including my stumbling out of the subway at 2nd Avenue to discover this mural above. Good LORD!
Before exiting the station, this subway ad reminded me to include something I covered over on Process Junkie this week:
Ann then some
This past week, many cartoonists stood in solidarity with Ann Telnaes after her resignation in protest after the Washington Post refused to run a cartoon depicting the slew of tech and business billionaires genuflecting to Trump, having all donated millions to his inauguration fund. The lie given for killing the cartoon was woeful. As Jack Ohman’s You Betcha! put it, “No one has crafted a less-effective excuse for not running a cartoon, ever, one time.”
In the ensuing days, many have done their own versions of the cartoon (some even used the theme as a jumping-off point for a different execution of the idea.) Either way, it’s something I hope we continue paying attention to despite the ever-increasing list of distractions —taking Greenland by force, setting Cybertrucks on fire, blaming different people for the LA fires etc.
Steve Brodner has collected some of the tribute cartoons here, and Ann has posted some more on her own Substack here. Please subscribe to Ann’s substack here, and support independent cartoonists. For what it’s worth, here is my contribution below.
Scroll down further to see the process of how I made this cartoon, and subscribe to Process Junkie for more peeks behind the scenes of my drawing board.
This week’s Sketchbook comes to you from the back row of a show at Rodney’s Comedy club that I was invited to on Thursday, hosted by my pals at @NewYorkers. This year I got to design their new logo (scroll down).
Rodney’s is the new name for what was once the world’s oldest and longest-running comedy club —and my ‘home’ club for many years— Dangerfields. I wrote about it a while back here on New York Cartoons. Give it a read if you like comedy!
New Year, New Yorkers, New Logo
I mentioned above the comedy show at Rodneys (formerly Dangerfields) run by my pals at @NewYorkers. I designed their logo back in 2023, and they’ve now split their account into several New York-based sub-accounts like @NewYorkLocals, @ApartmentsNYC and @NYSports. The newest sub-account is their comedy account, called @NewYorkers.live
Above is the new logo I designed, based on the microphone they use for their ‘man on the street’ vox pops. We went through a bunch of variations (below) before landing on this one— if you want me to design something for you, let me know in reply to this email.
Railing Against Subway Violence
Last week, I wrote about the spate of deadly shoving incidents on NYC subway platforms, with people standing with their backs right up against the walls. A pretty grim trend made worse with more people taking the subway after the introduction of controversial congestion pricing.
This week, I noticed many stations have now installed railings along the platform edge. Because rather than remedying the cause of the problem, it seems easier just to put railings up and hope for the best. Kind of like FoxConn putting nets on the side of their buildings to catch their suicidal workers. Good job, team. Pat yourselves on the back and go get your brows threaded, problem solved!
Do cartoons have to be funny?
The internet was aflare with some of the hottest dumbest takes on the Ann Telnaes story this week. (Weird for the internet, I know.) Takes spanned the idiotic-gamut from “One Cartoon Rejected in 15 Years? What a sore loser!” to “Well, maybe it’s just not funny.”
When I pushed back on the notion that not all cartoons need to be funny, it surprised some people— but it’s true. Cartoons aren’t like stand-up comedy acts; If they’re not funny, they can still do the job they’re there to do. One guy compared editorial cartoonists to Late Night hosts— in particular, their monologues at the top of the show.
That’s a terrible analogy; Late Night hosts are meant to be funny in their monologues. If they bomb, they aren’t doing their job. While political cartoons can use humour in their toolkit, it isn’t the only one they have at their disposal.
There’s a long-running misconception that all political cartoons have to be funny. Though they often are, just because they’re cartoons doesn’t mean they must be ‘funny’.
I was just looking through a collection book of cartoons depicting the events of World War 2 from everywhere across the world. Sometimes, humour was used to defang the powerful or make light of dark topics. Still, more often, the cartoons had carefully crafted* metaphors and visual language to distil the events down to easily understood images. Not all populations are literate. Images can sometimes bridge the chasm between different classes and languages using imagery.
One thing that struck me —slightly off-topic—was that the columns that were written alongside the cartoons were detailed descriptions of ‘what happened’, but the cartoons tended to be more in line with what the general populous thought or felt about ‘what happened.’
*Don’t get me wrong, there were some very unsubtle, heavy-handed clangers in there too, with labels on everything. Lots of hammers. Lots of sickles. Woof.
“Feels like -8C? I’m not going anywhere. Put a pee pad down.”
I agree. Cartoon is one of the media tools to effectively communicate your thoughts, like Twitter, which started with communicating in short messages across the media.
Jason - I look forward to your postings and read all of each one. Such a treat for me. Smiles! N