Snooping The Nooks & Crannies of New York with Cartoonist Tom Chitty

Fellow New Yorker Cartoonist Baron Von Schoogenheimer (AKA Tom Chitty) will join me tomorrow, Thursday at noon, to discuss his new book...

(Look, if you love accents, you’re gonna bloody love this one.)

Finding a genuinely distinct visual voice in the modern cartooning landscape is incredibly difficult. (I know, we could be doing something better with our time, but some of us have no other skills, so hear me out…)

Everybody’s constantly flooded with a digital firehose of content, and standing out in that endless, algorithmic scroll of bullshit requires a very particular kind of alchemy; You need to be instantly recognisable without being repetitive, and you need to be deeply funny without relying on tired tropes. It’s harder than it sounds…

So, tomorrow at noon, I get to escape the noise and sit down with someone who has absolutely mastered this alchemy. We are going live for Draw Me Anything with the brilliant illustrator and New Yorker cartoonist, Tom Chitty.

If you’ve ever opened an issue of The New Yorker in the store without paying for it, you have undoubtedly seen Tom’s unmistakable work. He’s based in Toronto, grew up in the UK, and has had over eighty (Yes, eight-zero) cartoons published in The New Yorker alone. He’s also a two-time nominee for the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award for illustration, which is entirely unsurprising when you look at his draughtsmanship.

What I love most about his work is his unapologetic embrace of the weird and whimsical. His characters are entirely his own. They often feature block-shaped bodies, a very specific, wide-stanced “bowl-leg” structure, and what he affectionately refers to as “implied noses”. (He once admitted in an interview that his character shapes were briefly influenced by a healthy obsession with Mayan hieroglyphs, which is exactly the kind of ridiculously absurd shit I love about cartoonists.)

I literally think about this cartoon three times a week. (Seven, if my dentist asks.)

Speaking of beautifully absurd tangents, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance proof of Tom’s spectacular new book coming out this April, published by Bystander Books. It is called Nooks & Crannies of New York: From the Chronicles of Baron von Schoogenheimer.

Holy mother of balls, it is an absolute masterwork of whimsical world-building. The book is framed as a collection of lost journals from an eccentric, long-lived Danish explorer, compiled after the narrator inherited a weathered sea trunk from his great-grandfather. Inside, Tom has illustrated an entirely alternate, magical history of New York City.

Between bouts of talking shop, we’re going to yap extensively about how he came up with the bizarre factions and secret societies in this project. He has documented everything from “Roof Mables”, who are wizened women living on water towers that help New Yorkers retrieve lost memories, to a subterranean community of artisans hosting midnight markets in the caverns below Manhattan. There’s even an entire chapter dedicated to “Cheese Pirates”, a gang of horse-bound buccaneers who terrorise luxury cheese shops across the city. Who thinks of this shit!? (Tom. Tom thinks of this shit.)

It is a wildly creative endeavour, and the detailed crosshatching and character design on every single page is staggering. It makes me want to lop off my drawing hand at the wrist and become a test pilot for an experimental Russian aircraft. I can’t deal with looking at this guy’s work without falling into a deep pit of self-loathing. Anyway, you’re gonna love it.

Putting these live streams together, wrestling with glitchy broadcasting software, and trying to convince the internet to pay attention requires a unique cocktail of caffeine and sheer willpower. If you want to join the live stream, request a drawing, and help repay the labour of making this digital monastery run, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for just $1 a week.

Oh, also, his process is a perfect bridge between the analogue and the digital. He doesn’t just stare blankly at a glowing screen all day, hoping for an idea. He carries a sketchbook everywhere, constantly recording raw ideas that he describes as “sketch-burps”. He draws everything by hand using a fineliner and ink on paper, and only brings it into the computer to clean up and colour digitally. It is a workflow that protects the human wobble of the line while still surviving the punishing deadlines of modern publishing.

So. Grab a coffee (or tankard of ale), locate your favourite fineliner, and tune in tomorrow (Thursday) at noon Eastern time.

‘til then!
Your pal,

PS. 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.