Morris Becomes NYC Celebrity, Human Artist VS. ChatGPT, & An Aussie Powerhouse on Broadway

#438 + Alex Dobrenko, Adam Ming, Picture This! & Morris says hello from Lilly's Bar

Welcome to Issue #438 of New York Cartoons! Coming at you with a steaming hot cup of coffee at Amish Market on West 49th Street…

Tonight marks the beginning of the 2025 season for the New Yorker Softball Team— we’re up against the New York Magazine at James J Walker Park in the West Village. I’ll give you an update on the game in next week’s edition.

I had fun at the various New York street festivals over the weekend— the Prospect Park one was one where I got hired to draw a bunch of local New Yorkers, including this handsome 1-year-old booooy:

👉 Sub-day in the Park with Alex.

Don’t forget to tune in today at 12:00pm Eastern for my chinwag about creativity with

Alex Dobrenko`

- comedian, and author of the best-selling, hilarious newsletter “

Both Are True

.” (among others).

---

👉 Talking Shop with Adam Ming!

For this week’s “Draw Me Anything” I’ll be scribbling and chatting with the very talented

Adam Ming

from

Ten Minute Artist - Daily Creative Joy

. Be sure to add this to your calendars for 11am Eastern this Thursday, May 22.

BREAKING! Local potato makes good fodder for hilarious new book. More on this developing story below...

The rain attacked the windows of Frisson Espresso on West 44th Street with the intensity of a toddler who's just discovered drums. I huddled across from Dashiell from W42st magazine, who had heroically risked drowning to interview me about the new book. Meanwhile, Morris—my French Bulldog and the undisputed celebrity of my household—was shivering, damp, below the table, nudging me for pats and chin scritches.

"So what inspired the book?" Dashiell asked, his recorder capturing what I prayed wouldn't be the sound of my brain short-circuiting…

Keep reading below:

The reviews from dogs have been glowing! Some pups won’t even let the book out of their sight and bring it to bed with them every night!

I drew the whole book by hand, using a dip pen and ink. It’s the furthest thing you’re going to get from automated AI slop that is drowning the internet these days. I hope you like it— I had a lot of fun drawing it.

Want a sketch of your own pooches, or someone you know with dogs?

(Thank you for the photo, Maria!)

Miss Eamon and Miss Emma on the couch with their personalized portrait in the new book (they look much cuter in person). Miss Emma knawed on her owner’s servant’s lipstick, hence the reference in the scribble:

I’ve been enjoying this story from

Shannon Wheeler

about his Dad— I recommend you follow his substack, he’s a great cartoonist and storyteller!

My Father

This week’s Sketchbook is a drawing of Tika The Iggy —one of my all-time favourite Dogstagram accounts.

Picture This! Live at Union Hall on 5/24

It’s that time again— This Saturday, May 24th will be another big show for Picture This at Union Hall. We have great comedians and animators including Will Santino (The New Yorker), Javadoodles, Bryan Brinkman (SNL/Tonight Show) and Ray Alma (MAD Magazine) along with comics including Josh Gondelman (Last Week Tonight), Usama Siddiqee (America’s Got Talent) and more!

If you’re in NYC this Saturday, book your tickets by clicking here!

Snook Knocks It Out Of The Park

Every now and then in this city, you get to witness something so crazy it makes you use swear words you didn’t even know were in your vocabulary. On Sunday, I watched Aussie powerhouse Sarah Snook blow the roof off in The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway before using one of those words multiple times.

She's been getting phenomenal reviews for the one-person adaptation where she plays all 26 characters! It's pretty remarkable to see someone tackle Oscar Wilde's classic with that level of versatility and intensity. She morphs between characters with minimal costume changes, relying heavily on her physicality and voice work.

Just the sheer stamina required to carry that entire production alone is astonishing. The crew is obviously a massive part of the production’s success, too. The technology used to alter her face in real time has never been done on Broadway before.

If you can still get tickets, I highly recommend grabbing some. I got to catch up with Sarah earlier this year at the opening of Old Mates pub downtown. It had been a long time between drinks! The pub literally ran out of beer that night.

A note by Sophie from That Final Scene today got me animated yet again about the brazen gaslighting leaders are doing when it communicates to staff about AI and what it is doing to their jobs.

“The story always sounds the same: Technology will change everything. Adapt or perish. Yet adaptation mysteriously always means producing more for less, with an ever-smaller slice of the pie.”

After writing about the topic above, I did a Substack Live where I went head-to-head with ChatGPT for 30 straight minutes. Watch the rest below:

Inspired by my One Dip Portraits challenge (above),

Musings of a Persian

: She is taking the ‘creativity within confines’ approach and challenging herself to use only one or two mediums and set a one-week time limit for each draft, which means that she’s not allowed to work on a draft if she doesn't finish it in a week. Take a look at some of her work here.

Further to my thoughts on AI writing from this week (above), I would direct your attention to 2 great writers/artists on the topic:

1. Oliver Burkeman
   in this week’s edition of The Imperfectionist:

   “One thing that’s missing from those discussions is any consideration of aliveness. Yet I think it might be the key to understanding how to think and feel about AI, how to respond to it, how to integrate it into our lives or not – and how to ensure, as technology marches on, that we don’t lose sight of what really matters for a meaningfully productive life.
   

   Most obviously, aliveness is what generally feels absent from the written and visual outputs of ChatGPT and its ilk, even when they’re otherwise of high quality. I’m not claiming I couldn’t be fooled into thinking AI writing or art was made by a human (I’m sure I already have been); but that when I realise something’s AI, either because it’s blindingly obvious or when I find out, it no longer feels so alive to me. And that this change in my feelings about it isn’t irrelevant: that it means something.”

2. Ann Telnaes has written & drawn a succinct summary of why the fatuous arguments Artificial Art proponents reflexively belch up are objectively false. Worth a read.

   AI is theft

3. My latest guest on Draw Me Anything,

   Jessie Kanelos Weiner
   discusses “How To Make An Artist Cringe” — within this excellent post, there is a very valuable nugget of insight that I think it’s really important to share:

   "Being an artist is a real, full-time job and often a lifelong pursuit without guaranteed success. And yes, it is difficult! It’s painfully competitive, culture budgets are getting slashed left and right and AI is coming in hard. But it’s tired when the only narrative around being an artist is dismally pessimistic."

   Watch our episode below:

Morris at his favourite bar: Lilly’s, where he’s “definitely a service animal.“