Since February 21, 1925, The New Yorker has developed a strong tradition of peppering 18 to 24 cartoons throughout its paper. The comics may be diverse in style and voice, but have come to fuse as one to define The New Yorker’s style. From this convention, a cloister of cartoon acolytes has sprung, many of whom fiercely enter the magazine’s Cartoon Caption Contest each week. Although many publications shut the door on cartoonists, The New Yorker has remained a safehaven of graphic slivers. To be published in its pages is a phantasmagorical dream for cartoonists worldwide.
But who is behind the pen for many of these legendary cartoons? I sat down with Drew Dernavich to discuss life as a wry and witty cartoonist. His cartoons are at the heart of The New Yorker, featuring distinct, bold-lined drawings paired with acerbic captions.
An essential ingredient of a cartoon is the drawn image. Drew shared that he’s been “drawing ever since he was little”, initially dreaming of a painting career. “I was introverted, so as I was a child I would stay inside and draw,” Drew said. “I often stayed inside drawing the things other kids were doing outside, such as practical jokes.”
He began to envision a career in cartooning after making cartoons for the school newspaper; his high school art teacher also dissuaded him from attending art school. “I thought it would be easy,” Drew titted, “but I found my sense of humour was terrible.” He discovered that drawing was only one element of cartoon craftsmanship.
Composing a cartoon requires a delicate balance of capturing the human experience and injecting it with surrealist wit. To brainstorm, Drew consults a variety of sources: magazine, fiction, real-life situations, an internet random noun generator. “There’s no strict formula or magic to it,” Drew shared. “You have to keep pushing it. It requires handwringing.”
When asked what makes a ‘good cartoon’, Drew offered some tips: the caption should be as short as possible, and should avoid explaining the joke. The situation should also be “topical, really funny, and really surprising”, and “reaffirm something you know”, whilst preferably working on multiple levels.
To budding student cartoonists, Drew advised, “Don’t imitate a certain publication’s voice!”. Many aspects of a cartoon contribute to its voice — the brushstrokes, caption style and humour. Each New Yorker cartoon I’ve encountered is a fingerprint, telling different stories with different tools.
One of my favourite cartoons by Drew adds an absurd twist to the reality of U.S. elections becoming popularity contests, displaying Shen Yun and Michael Bloomberg going face-to-face in the Presidential debate. Another beloved comic parodies the social phenomenon of “cuffing season” alongside the biological “flu season”, prompting chuckles as we muse on our collective experiences, illnesses or otherwise.
Drew has been a consistent contributor to The New Yorker since 2006, but his career undeniably required blood, sweat and tears as well as brushes, sketchbooks and tables. His tale of persistence entailed a “long period of trying and failing”, where he sent cartoons to The New Yorker for three years. He also submitted cartoons to other publications, but he found that media platforms often opt to fill blank spaces with advertisements rather than slices of entertainment, shrinking available publication opportunities. After several years of putting his nose to the grindstone, Drew took a pause and returned to a season of regular submissions with a refreshed style.
Drew’s perseverance paid off, and he did not lose steam at first sight of success. He follows a routine of devising ten ideas every morning. Then, as he stews on these sunrise thoughts, the power of time reveals which are genuinely funny. “I then submit ten cartoons to The New Yorker”, Drew said. “It’s quite a subjective process, so I am not always certain which one will be chosen.”
Drew chuckled as he regaled an anecdote where he submitted a cartoon to The New Yorker that he didn’t fully understand, and was shocked when the editor selected it. Later, the editor asked him what it meant, prompting them to realise that neither of them grasped its meaning!
On crises seizing the media landscape, Drew is somewhat pessimistic. “I refuse opportunities to teach cartoon classes”, he said, “because I fear there’s no career in it for others.” Publishing space for cartoons dwindles as the media is greedy for advertisement revenue, and “it is hard to make a living as a cartoonist”.
However, Drew is less nonplussed about Artificial Intelligence (AI) than many of his contemporaries. “Many of my friends are quite worked up about AI”, he said, “but to me, it’s just another media crisis, it’s just part of the media apocalypse.”
“It’s hard for AI to capture the essence of a good cartoon. Laughter comes from surprise, things that take wrong turns, non sequiturs. The inherent feature of AI is that it is derivative — it averages data and imitates style — everything that a good cartoon is not.”
Though I don’t have any cartooning experience, I’m holding onto hope that the crises facing cartoons and their beloved creators are short-lived. The simple fusion of illustration and caption has the power to bring us together and make us laugh, reminisce or return somewhere forgotten. Carving out space is the least media platforms can do to give these square-sized salves a home.
