Cartoonist Jason Chatfield appreciates occasional collaborator Scott Dooley.
In 2018, after 15 years of freelancing as a cartoonist and having been published many times flying solo, I started collaborating with my friend and fellow comic, Scott Dooley to share the frequent anxiety (and sporadic joy) of submitting New Yorker cartoons.
I hadn’t done this before and immediately found it so enlightening. Watching one of my own ideas go through the filter of somebody else’s comedy brain-wiring and come out the other end with a lateral tag or alt. punch
© Jason Chatfield
Scott and I have a similar enough sense of humour that we developed a quick shorthand, but also have different enough sensibilities and areas of specialty that we’re able to enhance each others’ ideas. Overall, we just agree on what’s funny. (—and probably more importantly; what isn’t.)
Before long, Scott and I had sold a handful of cartoons to the magazine’s print and online editions.
Read Jason’s thoughts on collaborating, with some inside New Yorker history from Michael Maslin.
Thanks, Dennis!