CSotD: Mankoff makes a sophisticated, gentlemanly landing
Skip to comments
After the shortest retirement in history, or, more precisely, in lieu of it, former New Yorker Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff has become Esquire Magazine Cartoon Editor Bob Mankoff.
The press release is interesting without being indiscreet, but the cartoon Mankoff drew to go with it suggests that he's happy to be out of a job he held for 40 years — there are many ways to express joy without the element of rescue — and I suppose whether we hear more or not will depend on his discretion, because it certainly won't depend on everyone's curiosity, which I'm sure is at fever pitch.
And, speaking of pitch, the mailroom at Esquire had better brace itself, and I'm sure many cartoonists in NYC vicinity are hoping Mankoff will bring his famous face-to-face pitch sessions to his new job.
The news reminded me of when I subscribed to Esquire in the early 70s, but, while I remember the now-revived "Dubious Achievements," I don't recall cartoons from that era. That doesn't mean a whole lot, except that when I think of The New Yorker, I automatically think of cartoons and, when I think of Playboy, I also think of cartoons. And titties. Possibly not in that order.
But I also think of an album my father had, which I now have, of Esquire cartoons from 1933 to 1957, so I pulled it down last night and went through it and rediscovered some old favorites as well as a lot that combined cartoons with titties, it being a "gentleman's magazine," albeit one you could leave on the coffeetable or in reach of a small child who probably wouldn't get the cartoons-with-titties humor, since it rarely actually featured the titties themselves.
Playboy had launched in 1953, just a few years before this album was thrown together, which verb I use because, as I went through it with the intention of running some examples of vintage Esquire humor, I was, well, unimpressed with the volume itself, which boasts on the cover of "550 cartoons, more than 150 in color" when the "color" often consists of a pink or blue wash over a grayscale cartoon.
The forward, which I certainly never read as a child, also contains a disclaimer from editor Arnold Gingrich of a George Petty cartoon that puzzled me as a child but which, in fact, contained the aforementioned titties.
Gingrich notes, at some length, that they got a lot of inquiries from people who didn't get the joke, but explains that the joke was intended to be supplied by the reader's own mind and that, now that others were being even more vulgar, Esquire wasn't going to publish such vulgarity anymore.
He even joked that knowing that would boost sales pending the new policy.
And he said that "we long ago conceded to the New Yorker a near-monopoly on sophisticated whimsy."
Which may explain why they now, lo these many years later, had to bring in Mankoff: When you concede sophistication and ban titties, it doesn't leave a lot of space for humor, though it does reinforce my opinion that editors don't understand cartoons.
So bring in Mankoff, who does, at least within the range of sophisticated whimsy.
Weasel-words aside, the biggest shortcoming of the collection is that it doesn't have dates on the cartoons, which span 25 years, making it hard to apply any context, though there are trends that reappear frequently, like Good Humor carts in odd places, which was a new thing in the early 30s, less so by the early 50s.
This classic Tabu perfume ad, which riffed on a 1901 painting by René François Xavier Prinet, was an obvious target for satire, and I wish I knew how far apart these takes appeared:
And, aside from some "chasing the secretary around the desk" cartoons that were considered funny then and aren't now, there were some more sophisticated, often self-deprecating takes on the topic:
As for pick-up artists, they didn't get a lot of respect in this gentlemen's magazine, but some of the self-deprecating (is "audience-deprecating" a term?) cartoons were pretty funny. For instance, before there were beer goggles, there were martini goggles, which perform the same function but with greater status:
And the transparency of this McKay-drawn masher is the point of the gag and we laugh at his blatancy, but are we supposed to admire his chutzpah or mock his lack of suaveness? I suspect the former, given that "gentlemen's magazines" specialize in optimistic speculation over probable outcomes. I also suspect Hefner would have taken the seat across the aisle, but the Playboy Philosophy was still under development, and in another, more "vulgar," magazine.
Though there's no doubt that these young gentlemen are to be mocked, nor is there much doubt that the E. Simms Campbell cartoon ran during WWII.
In fact, puncturing pomposity was a recurring theme in the collection:
(Syd Hoff)
And the Yiddish-influenced sentence structure, as well as the pastrami reference, in this Leo Garel cartoon makes the whole thing work. A particularly nice piece of story-telling.
Of course, there's also a story lurking behind this Hoff cartoon, but it's a same-old story, then, isn't it? I guess if Peter liked it, then he should have put a ring on it.
Despite Gingrich's disclaimer, this Roland Coe salute to sidewalk superintendants might easily have fit into the whimsically sophisticated pages of the New Yorker, though I certainly didn't get it as a kid leafing through my dad's cartoon collections.
I got this Garrett Price cartoon, however, and not only understood exactly what was going on — he's got all the storytelling elements present in the piece — but I loved the face on the lion and even understood that a real lion would not be in the least penitent, which is, after all, the gag.
A side note: I don't know that you could carry out that critical expression of remorse in the minimalist style most cartoonists employ these days.
I hope Mankoff can find some cartoonists with those kinds of chops, but, if he is going to introduce the in-person pitch sessions, he'll want to either be very specific about hours or else keep a stack of slips where they can be found, as Gregory d'Allessio might suggest.
And, Bob, try to find a whole lot of cartoons that come up to the level of this André François piece, which I close with because I have nothing to say about it, but I'd sure like to think there are more like it out there somewhere.
Comments 3
Comments are closed.