Julia Suits, who is based in Austin, Tex., has had about 40 cartoons published since 2005. And she said the rejection is not necessarily final, noting that illustrators are often encouraged to refine their work. Her three cartoons in the exhibition are at different stages of development, including one in which a mother’s summer camp send-off to her child does not feel like it’s “naturally falling out of someone’s mouth,” she said. She’s surprised the magazine has not taken one that stems from a word play on Möbius strip and Moby-Dick.
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Her white whale, however, may be her cartoon about a family of balloons contemplating a circumcision. “It started out with two parent balloons, the baby balloon and a human surgeon,” Ms. Suits recalled. The original caption was, “Don’t worry, I’ve done hundreds of these.” Then the adjustments began. The current iteration has the balloon parents looking over their son and the caption, “I’m nervous about the circumcision, Gary.”
“The most overthought cartoons are the least successful,” Ms. Suits said. “The ones that pop out of nowhere are the ones that seem to work.”
Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell sold a cartoon in May, but it has not been published yet. “I’ve asked other cartoonists,” she said. “It normally takes months. I’m trying to be patient.”
Ms. Campbell said her cartoons tend to address anxiety and relationships. They also have a dollop of absurdity. One of her works in the show depicts a kayaker heading into a cavern, above which is a traffic sign with the bubbles that show up on iPhones (and can cause much anxiety) when someone is writing a response to your text message. Could it be a tunnel of love or doom? Ms. Campbell calls it “the tunnel of you-do-not-know-what’s-coming.”
One of her other cartoons is inspired, in part, from her experience as a nanny, working with young children whose worlds are being informed by mobile devices. The image shows a nanny and a young girl, who has been rendered speechless after her ice cream cone has fallen. The caption: “Use your emojis.”
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/arts/design/new-yorker-rejected-cartoons.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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