469. The Met Review Launch in NYC, No Kings March, & A New Jersey Comedy Sketchbook
Plus! AI, Eggs and Humanity, A Zillion DMA Episodes, & King Morris gets his own Throne...
Hey again, friend.
Welcome to Issue #469 of New York Cartoons. As I’m writing this, Morris is sprawled out on my leg, staring out the window at a pigeon who has decided to make Morris his mortal enemy. The low growls are getting more frequent, but the vibrations feel good on my swollen calf. But enough about my lower leg pain— Anyway, how are YOU?
So much to catch up on this week. I know I’ve been posting a lot, but I’m really enjoying getting to build up a body of work here on Substack, and I hope you’re enjoying reading it…
When I launched this newsletter, I fully expected to spend my time exclusively dissecting the particular neuroses of my life in New York as a cartoonist and comedian.
I assumed the bulk of my writing would revolve around stale bagels, psychotic pigeons, and the absolute necessity of making squiggly marks on paper. I did not anticipate using this platform to also calculate the statistical probability of our impending global extinction. Yet here we sit. Talking, yet again, about…
I wrote this week about the folks at the Pro Human AI Declaration (and I’m dropping another hefty piece tomorrow as an addendum), but if you missed it, or saved it to read later… take a look:
It’s finally out in the world!
The new magazine that myself and the team have been working on had its big launch party in New York this past week and I’m still nursing my hangover from it…
The Metropolitan Review is finally out in the world, and you can get your hands on a copy by clicking here.
The crowd is dense. The energy is highly charged. People chant and march down the avenue while tourists stare blankly from the sidewalk. I stand at the corner and calculate my odds of successfully crossing the street. The mathematics are not in my favour. You cannot fight a human tide of righteous anger. You simply surrender to the current.
I joined the march for four blocks just so I could reach the subway, but also in solidarity. I, like everyone else in Trump’s hometown, despise the guy…
I check in with the manager, Denise. I then immediately make a fatal error… I order the seasonal “Warm Pumpkin Martini” at the bar. Do not ever do this. It tastes exactly like a warm, soggy clump of autumn leaves marinated in cinnamon and piss.
The feature act, Sean Morton, sidles up to the bar. He is hilarious. He tells me the stage lights here are so blisteringly hot he has to change his shirt after every single show because he literally ‘sweats out my entire body weight in water.’ Our headliner is Chris Redd, freshly cast on Saturday Night Live. He is insanely funny. He uses his Second City improv chops to completely dig himself out of an anti-Trump chunk in a room full of vocal Donald devotees. It is an absolute magic trick…
Leaving the apartment is generally a terrible idea. Putting on pants is even worse.
On Wednesday, April 8th, I am doing both. I am hosting a live Lectures on Tap event at a bar in the West Village. I will desperately try to explain how I went from drawing with literal rocks on remote Australian dirt roads to actively arguing with editors at The New Yorker over a sketch of an elephant buying peanuts.
We are going to dismantle the exhausting myth of the lone genius. The actual creative process is not glamorous. It consists entirely of sharing terrible shower notes and hoping someone else fixes them before the deadline.
Cartoonists are notoriously stubborn.
We find a tool that barely works, we adapt to its flaws, and we aggressively reject any suggestion that our lives could be easier. I was a strictly an ink and pen guy (Digital tablet for finishing, colouring & other stuff). I refused to entertain the idea of a luxury pencil.
Then, out of sheer exhaustion, (And seeing that my mate Amy Kurzweil made an entire graphic novel using Blackwing pencils) I finally bought a box of Blackwing 602s…
Around the fourth Thursday of November, a beautiful phenomenon occurs in New York City: Everyone vanishes. The mass exodus completely empties the streets and sidewalks. It is the absolute best time of the year to live in Manhattan. Thanksgiving is the one truly non-denominational holiday we have. During Christmas, a large portion of the non-observing population ends up eating Chinese food and going to a movie. (Another of my fave holiday traditions tbh). Thanksgiving is entirely different. Absolutely everyone in America seems to celebrate it… so I get in the tub.
Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads
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The Sketchbook I’m sharing with you this week is a selection of random pages from my sketchbooks. No particular theme. Just brain farts.
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The sheer logistical terror of running a comedy festival is not something the average person truly understands.
You have to convince nearly a hundred highly neurotic, sleep-deprived stand-up comedians to travel to a single location. You have to make sure they get picked up at the airport. You have to house them. You have to pray they have the personal organisational skills to actually show up for their spots. It is the epitome of herding cats… Ann Duke and her team do exactly this every single year, and by gosh, <adjusts glasses>, it works every time…
(Read more about the festival I’ll be attending this month in this here post:)
I live in an ancient little apartment a block from Times Square, because I love cooking dinner in my bedroom.
It’s more of a ‘Pre-War Cupboard’ really. I ordered a mini fridge the other day because I needed a guest bedroom. Morris, my French bulldog, is asleep on a pile of discarded drawing paper, completely unbothered by the fact that his gourmet kibble requires legal tender. My radiator clangs with the aggressive rhythm of a stolen Citibike being dragged backwards down a flight of subway stairs.
It’s a very particular kind of anxiety. You want to make art, but you also want to occasionally eat a Chipotle burrito (strictly no beans). It’s an impossible Venn diagram. I’ve made my living for twenty-one years as a freelance artist and comedian. I don’t have a day job, I don’t have a side hustle, and I don’t have a wealthy patron bankrolling my Blackwing addiction.
Luckily, Mason Currey came on the show this week. He’s the author of Daily Rituals, a book I devoured during the pandemic, and his new hardcover is out right now. It’s called Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life…
If there’s one thing I’ve been banging on about this week more than anything, it’s that finding a genuinely distinct visual voice in the modern cartooning landscape is brutal.
You need to be instantly recognisable. You need to be deeply funny. You need to build a world. (Oh, and try to make a living doing it.) Tom Chitty has built an entire universe. He is a British cartoonist based in Toronto, a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and an absolute master of the absurd and whimsical (okay, ‘silly’). His characters feature blocky bodies, wide stances, and an otherworldly charm. We sat down for Draw Me Anything yesterday to decode the mechanics of his highly specific, deeply funny brain.
Here is exactly how he builds his worlds…
Cartooning is, by its very nature, a deeply isolating profession. You spend the vast majority of your waking hours sealed in a room, hunched over a drawing board or a glowing Wacom tablet, having loud, animated arguments with people who only exist in your own head. There is no water cooler. There is no break room.
That is exactly why the Comic Lab podcast is so vital to the modern cartooning ecosystem, and exactly why I was so thrilled to have its hosts, Brad Guigar and Dave Kellett, on the stream today. Brad and Dave have recorded an astonishing 400 episodes of their podcast since 2018 (400 public episodes and hundreds more Patreon-exclusive pro-tips). They have essentially built a virtual bullpen for an industry that desperately needed one.
Trying to succeed as a cartoonist is crazy. Trying to succeed as a stand-up comedian is masochistic. Trying to do both simultaneously is a clear cry for psychiatric help. Emily Flake does both, and she makes it look infuriatingly easy.
My guest on Draw Me Anything this week is a cartooning powerhouse. She just won the 2026 Thurber Prize for American Humour. She is one of the rare artists whose distinct comic voice translates perfectly from the printed page directly to the stage. She also possesses a genuinely terrifying amount of hustle. Here is exactly how you build an absurd, multi-hyphenate career without completely losing your mind.
When I first sat down to chat with Jeremy Caplan about artificial intelligence and digital productivity tools, I genuinely did not think we would end up talking about him playing the violin. I certainly did not expect the conversation to pivot into a deep, philosophical appreciation for the irreplaceable magic of humans sitting in a room together, simply enjoying a live performance.
But tha’s the funny thing about talking to someone who spends their life evaluating machines. You inevitably end up talking about what it means to be human.
