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British Cartoonist Mulls New Yorker Cartoons

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D. D. Degg November 19, 2021 1 minute 0 comments

 
          ‘I can explain the meaning of life, 
       but not the meaning of New Yorker cartoons.’

So New Yorker gags are more philosophical than their British counterparts. Here, virtually anything goes — sick jokes, coarse jokes, badly drawn jokes, puns. The New Yorker has a metropolitan disdain for crudity and eschews wordplay. We reckon that if bawdy humour and puns were good enough for Shakespeare, they’re good enough for us.

New Yorker cartoons also tend to be more lifestyle-oriented, and inhabit a more whimsical world of middle-class social gatherings, boardrooms, domestic relationships and navel-gazing neuroses. Some recent ones look like architectural drawings, whereas British cartoons tend to inhabit a more traditional cartoon landscape: big noses, goofy expressions, surreal situations.

Cartoonist Nick Newman, for The Spectator, considers the difference
between New Yorker cartoon humor and British cartoon humor.