455. A Very Special Gig for the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Comic Con, & This week's DMA with Tom Toro!

Plus! Hilary Campbell's new book, Williamsport Recap, & Morris gets

Hey again, friend. Welcome to Issue #455 of New York Cartoons.

I know next to nothing about American football. I know there are helmets, there are head injuries, and there is a halftime show with a man named Mister Bunny that many Republican fellows are very upset about. But… that didn’t stop the 2025 Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles from reaching out to commission me to illustrate their game day poster for this week’s match against the New York Giants!!

That’s about all I can share at this point. I’ll be posting on Thursday, the morning of the game, with a big reveal of the artwork, along with a step-by-step process of how I created it.

As it happens, I finished and turned in the art while I was IN Pennsylvania, the home of said Eagles wearing helmets. It added to the authenticity. Why was I in Pennsylvania? Welp, I’m behind on my book deadline, and I needed to get out of New York to sit down and focus on churning through pages. I spent the week at a writers’ residency in Williamsport— a 250-year-old town (city?) that I’ll be returning to in November for a big local event for dog-owners. (Stay tuned for more on that.)

I did sneak in a couple of shows while I was out there. One of them was a doooozie. I wrote it up here. Read at your own risk. I posted an excerpt further down if you’d like to take a sip before guzzling the rest. The writer’s residency was just the break I needed to knuckle down on my book (and chow down on several others written by far more talented writers.) I couldn’t get enough of Sam Tallent’s amazing “Running The Light.” I haven’t had an experience like that since Hunter S Thompson’s “The Rum Diary”. I quite literally couldn’t put this book down. It became a real problem. Anyone who has any interest in the reality of what a life on the road doing stand-up comedy looks like you should read this book.

Buy me a slice? (or a diner coffee.)

Some of you have been writing in letting me know you can’t necessarily support my work with a full subscription, but would like the option of making a one-off donation or ‘tip’ instead. —Of course! I’d be very grateful for either if you can afford it. The best way to do that securely would be through Venmo (@jasonchatfield) or my PayPal at: PayPal.me/jasonchatfield or ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ (or even, a New York Slice).

It’s that time again…

I’ll be at New York Comic Con this week, Thursday through Sunday, selling books, sketching dogs, and -let’s be honest- counting the minutes until I get to leave the Javits Centre.

This is a very particular time of year when the city gets overrun with cosplaying fans of various popular culture properties, and the halls of the convention centre are packed to the gills with all kinds of weird and wacky obsessives waiting to get a glimpse of their favourite actor (…or Substacker?)

If you’d like to stop by the booth and say hello, I’d love to meet you— these are the times I’ll be at the National Cartoonists Society booth (3801).

Hilary’s new book is out today!

I’ll be sharing the booth with my good pal, New Yorker cartoonist (and previous DMA guest)

Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell

who has a BRAND NEW BOOK out today! You can order it below if you have any interest in food, love or family. I got a glimpse of it earlier this year and it turned out great!

Speaking of New Yorker cartoonists with books out today…

My new pal

Tom Toro

has a great one out called “And to Think We Started as a Book Club” — a collection of hilarious cartoons that have never been put together anywhere else.

You can hear Tom and me chatting about the new book—among other things— this week, Wednesday at noon. Add it to your calendars!

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Anatomy of a Hell Gig

The sweat was dripping down my back like a leaking tap. As I opened my mouth to deliver my next joke, I got a ringing in my left ear. I don’t know if it was tinnitus or God’s way of giving me the light.

The ‘audience’ was watching a football game with comedy as background noise; the world’s most depressing elevator music. Dry-tongued, I stammered through the first twelve words before she cut me off, “I like your shoes!” The ensuing silence went for what felt like a holiday weekend. “My shoes,” I repeated. “They’re boots!” Someone yelled from the next table over. I opened my mouth to respond— Just then, a touchdown was scored and the ruddy-faced smattering of drunks leapt from their plastic chairs in elation, hollering and clinking mugs over their love handles and chicken wings. An old woman in a moon boot wobbled in off the street and leaned against a high top. I turned towards her and we locked eyes. She took one look at the desperate scene before clicking her tongue and limping back into the night.

I’d woken up early that morning, hungover and took a Greyhound to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The bus was mercifully empty, but the blackwater tank was full. Plumes of passenger poo wafted through the cabin like smoke in a cigar lounge. It reminded me of a bus I took to Atlantic City nine years ago, when an oblivious lump of a man unwrapped a fresh hoagie and filled the packed cabin with onion stank.

Taking a bus to the middle of nowhere sounds like the kind of trip you’d make if you were fleeing a crime scene, but in my case, it was to knuckle down and finish my book. I’m dangerously close to deadline. My editor is being very patient, but I could hear his teeth grinding from the I-80 West.

Emily Flake—New Yorker cartoonist, saint, and benevolent landlord of the St. Nell’s Writers Residency—told me and a couple of other comedians that we could have a small room for a week. A little monastery for comedy writers. Because if there’s one thing comedy writers need, it’s confinement. The other two comics hit a snag with their rental car back in the city and couldn’t make it until later in the week, so for now, it’s just me and my cavernous skull sharing a room.

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Doing a poop on the stoop.