If you’re a fan of cartoons in The New Yorker you’ll enjoy Harry Bliss and Steve Martin’s A Wealth of Pigeons. Bliss is provides excellent cartoons and Martin provides the punchlines. Here’s a couple of examples:
About 130 cartoons fill this book. I found about a third of them funny, a third made me smile, and a third were clunkers. You have to find fun where you can get it these days. Do you enjoy cartoons? Steve Martin? Harry Bliss? GRADE: B
I have a subscription to the Borowitz report and every day watch and really enjoy the New Yorker cartoons.
Especially when they ask readers to find captions for their cartoons …
Sometimes it’s real gallows humour!
Wolf, we have a subscription to the print edition of THE NEW YORKER. I enjoy the cartoons most.
I enjoy them but I seldom come across them anymore. My favorites were the Far Side by Gary Larsen. I also used to look out for ones by S. Gross.
Steve, the decline of newspapers has also affected political cartoons.
Nothing will ever top James Thurber’s classic “Touché” cartoon.
Deb, “Touche” remains a classic.
The first thing I do when I get my NEW YORKER each week is to flip through it and check out the cartoons. I always loved THE FAR SIDE, but it doesn’t seem quite as funny now that it’s in reruns. DILBERT is funny at times, even though all the characters except Dilbert are thoroughly loathsome. DOONESBURY isn’t nearly as good now that it appears just once a week. Most of all I miss CALVIN AND HOBBES. I know you were asking about cartoons rather than comic strips, but the ones in the NEW YORKER are just about the only ones I ever see. Both of the ones shown above are pretty good.
Michael, the BUFFALO NEWS runs DILBERT but as you say the strip features a lot of loathsome characters and the “humor” veers to the Dark Side regularly. THE NEW YORKER remains the best home for true cartoonists. You would enjoy A WEALTH OF PIGEONS.
Yes, I like cartoons – I do check out the recycled The Far Side every day – but never read The New Yorker. I also like Calvin and Hobbes and Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast. I don’t really know Harry Bliss. I was an early fan of Steve Martin (we saw him in concert twice – once, surreally, opening for Andy Williams!), and still like a lot of his stuff. But I sometimes find him unbearably pretentious and annoyingly self-important.
Jeff, I share your feelings about the current Steve Martin. Diane wanted to see Steve Martin and Martin Short at Shea’s Performing Arts Center (you can read my review here: http://georgekelley.org/steve-martin-martin-short/
My taste in cartoons run to the weird side (Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, Charles Rodigues, Sid Gross) and to the outrgeously pun-ish and inexplicable. For comic strips, give me THE FAR SIDE, CALVIN AND HOBBES, POGO, and PEARLS BEFORE SWINE. Unlike Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, I could never get into ARLO AND JANIS or TANK MCNAMARA
Jerry, I have volumes of Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams cartoons. Wonderful and weird!
THE NEW YORKER cartoons help fill the awful void created when POGO disappeared into the swamp.
Dan, POGO may have been the best comic strip of them all.
I have subscribed to the New Yorker my entire life and I never look at the cartoons. If I do see one, I often don’t get it. I only seem to respond to verbal humor and sometimes not that. I have a lot of deficits I’m afraid. I read the New Yorker movie reviews, book reviews, tv reviews and some of the articles. All of the stuff upfront too. I never read the stories or the cartoons. I never read the comics in the newspaper either. Maybe this malformation in my brain is at fault.
Patti, I grew up reading comic books so my mind is keyed to graphic images. I read THE NEW YORKER book review, movie reviews, TV reviews, and some of the articles, too. But their tastes are far different than mine.
My favorite is Edw. Gorey. I used to have an extensive collection of his things, including mini books, wall paper from the set of dracula he designed, etc. I kept a few things, Gorey Games & tunnel calamity. Also have some T shirts, etc. I scored a lot of things very cheap at the Gotham Book mart years ago.
I still enjoy cartoons, favorites being Baby Blues, Pearls before swine & pickles. Bliss is hit or miss with me. Our paper still carries Mary Worth & Rex Morgan MD. They stopped another of these remnants of a different age a couple of years ago.
I have had this book on order at the library for months. They ordered 10 copies and have been “in process” for 6 weeks. Finally, 3 have been released and I have hopes of getting it.
Maggie, you will enjoy A WEALTH OF PIGEONS when the Library finally tells you it’s holding it for you. Like you, I’m a Edward Gorey fan. I have many books with his cover artwork. I also own a couple of his collections. Brilliant and unique!
Just found this today:
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/apartment-optical-illusions
This was especially interesting for me as a mathematician since some of those optical illusions were built on works by M C Escher – who built some of them on ideas of famous mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, who just got the Nobel Prize for his work on Black Holes.