6/6/16

The Cover That Wasn't

Years ago, cartoonists used to make a weekly pilgrimage to midtown Manhattan, visiting The Saturday Evening Post, Look, and other magazines in hopes of selling some of their drawings. Today, the only stop left on the circuit is The New Yorker.

For three consecutive weeks about 15 years ago, I made the Tuesday trek to the office of Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor there. The process is informal. You find out who among the gaggle of hallway loiterers is last in line and wait until you see them exit Bob's office.

On each visit, I left the building with the same number of unsold cartoons I'd come with. About the best I did was to get a reaction along the lines of "there might be something there." But it wasn't there yet. On the last visit, I mentioned to Bob that it was my goal to have a cartoon in The New Yorker sometime before I die. He jokingly replied, "Call me if you're feeling ill." So there is hope. We all get old and decrepit at some point, right? 

A little while later, I decided to swing for the fences — drawing up the cover you see below. It's an actual working crossword, themed to The New Yorker. All of the clues can be found lurking in the surrounding city scene. 

To make a short story even shorter, here's the response I got back after submitting the drawing to the magazine: "Not quite right for us."
[Click image to enlarge]

3 comments:

  1. That's it - I'm cancelling my subscription! Actually I was thinking of doing that anyway because most of the articles are waaaay too long and contain excessive commas. They would have inserted 2 into the above sentence. Drives, me, nuts. And now this snub of a brilliant cover... I've had it! (How do I change my name to Suzy M so you'll know it's me?)

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  2. I have a vague recollection that the puzzle was timely, too, wasn't it? There was some anniversary, or some festival or street fair?

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  3. Suzy M, I think your parenthetical comment did the trick. :-)
    Dan, no, nothing time-sensitive.

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