The September 25 issue of The New Yorker saw Kyle Bravo debut as one of two new cartoonists to the magazine. Michael Maslin at the time noted:
Two newbies: Amelia Cossentino, and Kyle Bravo. They are the 12th and 13th cartoonists brought into the magazine’s cartoonist stadium this year, and the 138th and 139th cartoonists added since Emma Allen took the cartoon editor reins in May of 2017.
Earlier in 2023:
Kyle Bravo was visiting family in Alabama this past summer when he got the word — or, in his case, the two letters “O” and “K.”
Bravo remembers he had ducked into the kitchen to check emails and clicked on one he’d been waiting for. The “O.K.” in question is the traditional New Yorker way of alerting a cartoonist that their work had been selected for the magazine — and it’s how Bravo learned he’d joined the ranks of Charles Addams, James Thurber, Peter Arno and Roz Chast.
Kyle Bravo was now a New Yorker cartoonist. For people who draw funny pictures, it’s the equivalent of seeing your name up in lights.
MIchael Tisserand for The New Orleans Times-Picayune talked to Kyle about his career leading up to this highlight. Naturally reaching the peak did not happen overnight:
As is usually the case, sudden success followed years of dedicated work. A Willow School art teacher by day, Bravo — a Baton Rouge native who lives in Algiers with his wife, artist and teacher Jenny LeBlanc, and their two children — had for the past decade been building a modest but devoted following with regular submissions to New Orleans’ free arts, culture and news magazine Antigravity, as well as a self-published autobiographical comics series titled “Forever and Everything.”
Kyle tells of submissions, getting advice from established New Yorker cartoonists, and the revision process his published cartoon went through.
And the news that a second cartoon has been OK’d!