465. New York is Snowed Under, Liza Donnelly Returns, & The New Yorker Exhibition Closes after a Year

#464: Plus! Kyle Beaudette, Live Sketches in Columbus Circle, & Morris makes a deal.

Photo by Anne Kadet of @cafeanne

Hey again, friend.

Welcome to Issue #465 of New York Cartoons. New York City has spent the last 48 hours getting absolutely pummeled by a blizzard, and the city is currently less “Concrete Jungle” and more “Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back.” (The above photo is courtesy of Anne Kadet from CAFÉ ANNE.) The streets are buried, the trash piles have been terraformed into majestic white mountains, and I am currently writing this while wearing three layers of wool. But while the city is frozen solid, I have been surprisingly productive (mostly to avoid going outside). I have a massive update for you this week, so pour something hot, wrap yourself in a blanket, and let’s get into it…

This coming week, I’ll be doing not one but two editions of Draw Me Anything, where I’ll be talking with two of Substack’s most popular cartoonists, Liza Donnelly and Kyle Beaudette, (Wrapped up by an hour-long AMA with my friends at the Design Better podcast on Friday at noon Eastern)

Save the Date: Liza Donnelly TODAY - Tuesday, February 24th @ 12:00 PM EST

Longtime subscribers will remember her from DMA#25, where we covered everything from breaking glass ceilings to the intricate politics of drawing pigs and aliens. Liza has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1979 (I started in 2017, so I am basically a toddler in comparison), and she has been a tireless champion for women in a field that, let’s be honest, was a bit of a boys’ club for about, ooooh, 90 years.

This time, she is back to talk about something impressive: Liza has directed a new documentary called Women Laughing, which is having several upcoming screenings with panels coming up in NYC: on March 9th at the Athena Film Festival, tickets here, March 19th at the Society of Illustrators, tickets here. And March 25th at the Brooklyn History Library, tickets here. COME!

Save the Date: Kyle Beaudette
Thursday, February 26th @ 4:30 PM EST

Somehow, in a moment of weakness on his part, I finally convinced the amazing, brilliant, and terrifyingly talented Kyle Beaudette to join me on Draw Me Anything.

If you aren’t already familiar with Kyle’s work, you have likely seen it and thought, “I feel seen, slightly attacked, but also delighted.” He describes himself on his own Substack as a “character designer, author, illustrator, balding, man, fat, pig, cartoonist”, which is the kind of brutal self-deprecation I usually have to pay a therapist to extract from me.

Via Design Better:

Join us for on Friday, February 27th at 9:00a PT for a conversation and AMA with Jason Chatfield, cartoonist extraordinaire. We’ll chat about his creative process, living a creative life, and what he calls “the slow burn of mastery,” as well as taking questions from the audience.

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Usually, when I see something brilliant in the city, I want to shout about it immediately. But “A Century of The New Yorker” at the New York Public Library felt different. It felt like a secret best shared in person. I didn’t want to spoil the experience for anyone by posting too many photos or giving away the best gags. I wanted you to go see it for yourself.

But today is the last day. After a full year, the exhibition is closing, and if you haven’t had a chance to wander through the hallowed halls of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to see it, I want to take you there now:

This conversation is so important for people to hear, so I’ve decided to remove the paywall on the replay. Please feel free to share it with anyone you think might find it useful to hear.

The Sketchbook I’m sharing with you this week is a selection of the sketches I did for a live caricaturing event in Columbus Circle on Saturday night. If you’d like me to draw your guests at your next event, be sure to get in touch.

Refusing to move until the snow does.