Aaron Alexander interviews New Yorker cartoonist Mick Stevens:
AA: When you and I talked via email a few weeks ago, you mentioned that you believe a cartoonist?s style is one of the most important things as far as getting noticed, and that style is not just drawing, but the way you think. Can you expand on this idea? How would you characterize your style?
MS: The best cartoonists, I think, are those whose personal style doesn?t too closely resemble that of anyone else?s. Like a lot of artists starting out, my earlier work looked much too much like other people?s. When I began drawing, I aped others because of a lack of confidence in my own abilities. (My drawings didn?t seem to me to be legitimate professional cartoons until I saw them in print.) I found out later that it was best to just relax and let my style emerge in a more natural way. That process is still going on.
Via Michael Maslin
Everyone, rush to the New Yorker for Stevens’s chicken cartoon! Masterpiece!
Yes it is and I don’t have to “rush” over because when I saw it I had the same reaction. It accomplishes the impossible: redefining a joke as old as jokes themselves.
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/A-chicken-sits-at-a-bar-called-Ed-s-Roadside-Lounge-with-a-road-in-the-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i12677238_.htm