How Hard Is It To Get a Cartoon Into The New Yorker?
One by one, in the order they’d arrived, cartoonists disappeared into Mankoff’s office and emerged a few minutes later. One cartoonist was asked by another “How’d you do?” The reply was a shrug. Everyone’s expectations were low, and how could they not be? Rejection is the norm. Fifty years ago, you could make a modest living selling work to popular, general interest magazines like Cavalier, Fact, Look, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Saturday Review, but today it’s almost impossible to eke out a living as a gag cartoonist. There are still places that buy gag cartoons (like pharmaceutical brochures and yoga magazines) but none with the tradition or cachet of The New Yorker. I don’t normally draw gag cartoons; I’m what’s now called a “graphic novelist.” I’m not really considering a career change, but I was dealing with the mid-career blahs and wanted to try something new. It takes me several years to write and draw a book. The book’s subject determines and limits what I can and can’t
