by Mankoff, Bob
But the birth of the Cartoon Bank itself, as a real entity, like the birth of Sarah, was not due to me alone. And the same person—my wife, Cory—had everything to do with both. Sarah for obvious reasons, and the Cartoon Bank by completely supporting me as I threw my time and energy and a lot of our money in what many thought to be a hairbrained scheme
“Geez, Bob, this is stupid. What have you got, hair for brains?”
and then, in effect, showing me how to run it as a business, because she had experience in running a business—her own, Whittier & Associates, which handled direct mail for nonprofits.
I knew it would take a lot of scanning, because the many thousands of cartoons that had been published in The New Yorker represented just the tippy top of the cartoon iceberg. And with such lame metaphors, and many drinks, I convinced most of the magazine’s cartoonists that the Cartoon Bank was a good idea.
One cartoonist I was unable to convince was the master gagman Sam Gross, who had drawn many great cartoons, some of which The New Yorker had rejected because they were, well, too gross.
Sam was dubious about the whole Cartoon Bank idea, which he called a scheme, making it sound like a scam. He grilled me about it, in his unreconstructed Bronx accent, with questions like “What happens to all my cartoons in the Cartoon Bank if I croak?”
I assured him that they’d be buried along with him, preserving his withered remains much better than formaldehyde. He was not reassured. Even when this article appeared in New York Magazine, in 1992,
Sam, unimpressed, remarked, “Fuhgeddaboudit!”
But five years later, Sam was on board, along with the rest of the magazine’s cartoonists. Why? Well, because of Tina Brown, who was mentioned in that article as taking over the helm of The New Yorker and perhaps tossing some of its crew members overboard, but luckily not me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUCKING OUT, GETTING IN
A brief digression on luck. There are all kinds, some better than others.
“Amazing, three failed marriages, scores of disastrous relationships, many financial reversals, and countless physical ailments, but through it all I’ve always had good luck parking.”
Actually, I do have good parking luck. Unfortunately, some of the rest of that caption applied as well. I had been lucky that Lee Lorenz was the cartoon editor and that he was looking for new blood and accepting of new ideas, or I never would have become a New Yorker cartoonist—maybe, for that matter, not even a cartoonist, because there weren’t other viable markets for the cartoon think pieces I was doing back then.
And I was fortunate that Lee didn’t box me in. He let me move away from those kinds of pieces to explore the verbal side of my comic sensibility, so that by the time Tina took over I was churning out one-liner cartoon captions à la Henny Youngman that an updated Henny himself might have been proud of.
I had been selling the magazine about thirty cartoons a year—not bad. But under Tina my sales shot up and I was selling every week—sometimes more than once a week. There was one batch where I actually sold seven cartoons! Why? Basically, Tina went for a joke with a strong punch line. Exactly the opposite of the abstract, intellectual humor of my early career, but my career was no longer early, and I had now embraced my inner gagman, my Queens wise guy.
It was under the reign of Queen Tina that this cartoon of mine was published:
“No, Thursday’s out. How about never—is never good for you?”
It’s by far the most popular cartoon I’ve ever done. And its punch line, like Arno’s “Back to the old drawing board,” became a part of the American vernacular. So much so that it’s earned me a spot in The Yale Book of Quotations, right there with Thomas Mann and Lord Mansfield.
It also earned me the dubious distinction of being quoted—ripped off for T-shirts, decals, and this lovely thong:
But whether ripped off or respected, the popularity and attention of that cartoon cemented my status as something of a golden boy for Tina.
And the attention I was getting for the Cartoon Bank did not escape her notice, either. Two years after that New York Magazine article, there was this article in the business section of The New York Times:
At a luncheon Tina held for the cartoonists, she told us, including the irascible Sam Gross, that she thought the Cartoon Bank was “a million-dollar idea.” All of this was exhilarating but also frightening. Here I was on the cusp of becoming an overnight success at the age of fifty. I had luck and Tina on my side, so what could go wrong? Everything, I feared. What Queen Tina wanted, Queen Tina got, and as long as I was golden, that boded well. Right now, Tina was blowing hot, but she could just as easily blow cold, and then off with your head as well as your headline. Golden boys, under Tina, could turn to lead very quickly.
Besides, my “million-dollar idea” was worth only the equivalent of about six hundred thousand pounds, and I worried that once Tina did the math she wouldn’t be so keen on it. Also, whether in pounds or dollars, the Cartoon Bank’s revenue was much more potential than actual. Still, by 1997 the Cartoon Bank was up on this newfangled thing called the Internet and was among the first, if not the first, to, in today’s jargon, “monetize” cartoons.
One person who definitely realized the potential of the bank was the deputy editor, Pam McCarthy. Pam had come over to The New Yorker with Tina from Vanity Fair. At Pam’s suggestion Tina had begun urging Si Newhouse, the owner of The New Yorker, to buy the Cartoon Bank. The idea was to expand it beyond rejects to include every cartoon that The New Yorker had ever published.
The negotiations were carried out with Tom Florio, who was the publisher at the time, and a very challenging person to negotiate with. He was tough, savvy, and kept blowing cigar smoke in my face. Admittedly, very expensive cigar smoke, but still.
First we had to get the minor matter of money out of the way. Once that was settled—they agreed to give me whatever I could find under the cushions of Si Newhouse’s couch—I agreed to sell the Cartoon Bank, as long as two other conditions were met: (1) I would continue to be its president and (2) I would also become cartoon editor.
The first condition made complete sense, but the second maybe not. The New Yorker already had an excellent cartoon editor, Lee Lorenz, a brilliant cartoonist himself with over a thousand published New Yorker cartoons who had been doing the job very well for twenty-four years.
Look, I was very grateful to Lee for having brought me into the magazine, but not so grateful that I didn’t want his job. In other words, I was an ingrate. It wasn’t that I thought I could do it better, but I did think I could do it differently, by evolving the tradition, bringing in new comic sensibilities, and using the combined positions of president of the Cartoon Bank and cartoon editor to make cartooning more economically viable. So when push came to shove, I guess I did think I could do the job better.
I actually didn’t expect them to meet the second condition and I knew they wouldn’t, but I felt it couldn’t hurt to have my ambitions, both for myself and the expanded nature of the job. And it didn’t, because when Lee decided to retire later that year, ambitious, eligible Bob got tapped by Tina for the job.
I’m not sure about how Lee felt about me stepping into his shoes. Probably a bit uncomfortable because he was still in them. Nevertheless, when I took over, he graciously showed me the ropes and, even more graciously, made no attempt to hang me with them. Lee continues to produce wonderful cartoons for the magazine, for which The New Yorker and I are truly grateful. And looking back now on what I’ve accomplished as cartoon editor, as compared to what Lee did in his twenty-four years, I can humbly say, paraphrasing Lloyd Bentsen in his 1988 vice-presidential debate with Dan Quayle, that I knew Lee Lorenz, Lee Lorenz was a friend of mine, and I’m no Lee Lorenz.
Nevertheless, in 1997 I became president of what was now The New Yorker’s cartoon bank as well as cartoon editor of The New Yorker. On the Cartoon Bank side, Cory came along with me. This could be construed as nepotism, but it wasn’t, because by
this time she was the COO.
Since then, the Cartoon Bank has gone through many iterations. As I write, this is the latest one, as part of the Condé Nast Collection.
But the basic model is still the same: an online database from which you can buy a print or license a cartoon. And, by the way, as a cartoonist, cartoon editor, and founder of the Cartoon Bank, I strongly urge you do to so. Not for Condé Nast. Condé Nast doesn’t need the money, though its accountants will gladly take it; but, as I’ve pointed out, the cartoonists always do.
An aside before moving on: I’m no longer president of the Cartoon Bank. Why? This cartoon says it best:
“I’ll quit when it stops being fun.”
The fun stopped for me about ten years into it, when the focus shifted from the Cartoon Bank to using the online platform to promote Condé Nast’s photos, covers, and illustrations from other magazines, such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, and Golf Digest. Nothing wrong with doing that from a corporate point of view, but from a personal perspective it was clear that someone who has no interest in fashion, never reads celebrity profiles, is unglamorous, and agrees with Mark Twain that golf is “a good walk spoiled” wouldn’t be a good fit to head such an entity.
But back when I became cartoon editor and Cartoon Bank president while still being a cartoonist for the magazine, it was a ton of fun and a heady time for me and, frankly, it went to my head. Especially when an entire Nightline special, called “Drawing Laughter,” was devoted to my ascension.
Tina praised my cartoons and the creation of the Cartoon Bank. And Ted Koppel celebrated, in Koppelian tones, how I was bringing cartooning into the digital age by using a computer to construct a collage of cartoonists’ characters from the 1920s to the present day for The New Yorker’s first annual cartoon issue (sixteen followed).
To top it all, Ted signed off at the end of the show magically perched inside the very cover I had created.
I soon learned, however, that not all publicity is good publicity. The New York Times article about my promotion started off well enough: “Last week, The New Yorker named a cartoon editor for the first time since 1973. The anointed, Robert Mankoff, was chosen because in addition to possessing ‘an edgy, contemporary kind of humor, he’s a passionate curator of and defender of and promoter of the art of cartooning,’ said the magazine’s editor, Tina Brown.” That article was called “Tradition on Trial as New Yorker Rethinks Cartoons.” But things sort of went downhill from there.
The article noted that “there is ample criticism of what The New Yorker has printed lately” and then gave ample voice to that ample criticism. Examples: Barbara Nichols, a gallery owner who had worked at “the old New Yorker,” said the cartoons’ tone had “lost its sophistication” and “now it’s all about trying to titillate people.” Peter Kuper, a teacher at the School of Visual Arts, commented, “It’s definitely more idea-driven than art-driven.” He added, “Personally, I’m always sorry to see the drawing quality go down.” And finally Marshall Blonsky, a professor of semiotics (the study of signs) bloviated about a particular New Yorker cartoon,
“If I told you the secret of making light, flaky piecrust, it wouldn’t be much of a secret anymore, now would it?”
in the following way:
“This is humor and it’s supposed to make you smile at the expense of a type.… It’s making fun of a type that doesn’t exist any longer. It’s a failure. Young women don’t want to make pie crust and their swains don’t want to eat pie crust, because it gives you cholesterol.” He summed up cartoons like this: “Not only do they not have a shelf life,” he said, “they don’t have a life.”
Fortunately, not many people pay much attention to semioticians, which is, ahem, a good sign. And bloviations notwithstanding, the search for light flaky piecrust goes on unabated.
The article’s basic complaint was that New Yorker cartoons weren’t as good as they used to be, because, in summary, they were titillating, badly drawn, out of touch, and ephemeral. My short answer to the complaint that the cartoons weren’t as good as they used to be is “They never were.” The longer answer will be contained in my forthcoming multivolume treatise, The Rise and Fall and Rise of the New Yorker Cartoon. But here’s a preview.
True, when Tina Brown became editor, in 1991, she shook up the staid image of The New Yorker—by publishing, for instance, an article about a dominatrix who fancied herself a healer.
Definitely a bit titillating. And some of the cartoons published under Tina were even titillating enough to have actual tits in them.
“This is where they use the body double.”
“Must be sweeps month.”
“They thought a wire-free party would put everyone at ease.”
Shocking. But, honestly, to be shocked in the 1990s by the cartoon representation of those delightful and universally admired secondary sexual characteristics of women would be even more shocking. As Tina opined in the New York Times article, “There’s nothing really we don’t allow. It’s all about whether it’s really funny. A big mistake would be to be too prissy. The last thing we want to be is politically correct. I would rather err on the side of offending a few people than to get prissy with the cartoon choice.”
Actually, there was plenty that “we” didn’t allow, still don’t, and still shouldn’t, and it took me a while to sort those rules out. But the world of the 1990s, Tina’s world, was not the world of the 1950s or even the 1970s, when I’d started cartooning.
Under William Shawn, a glimpse of stocking may not have been looked on as shocking, but pretty much everything else was, especially when it came to sex. Since then, the sexual revolution had indeed happened, and thanks to Tina, it finally made its way to the pages of The New Yorker.
Another revolution that the cartoons had to acknowledge was in the news itself. The news cycle was not yet the Internet’s relentless twenty-four/seven, but as this 1994 cartoon of mine indicates, it was moving in that direction.
“Many, many news cycles ago…”
So we published some cartoons that might appear to have a short shelf life, like Bernie Schoenbaum’s drawing depicting a “wire-free” nude party in Washington, which referred to Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton. And these two, by William Hamilton and Bob Weber, directly targeting the White House sex scandal:
“So Zeus was like their President Bill Clinton?”
“Are you decent?”
In the end, all of them would have a continuing afterlife as a comic chronicle of our politics and culture, always available online at cartoonbank.com and in anthologies like The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker (2004). In a New York Times review, Janet Maslin called that book “a transfixing study of American mores and manners that happens to incorporate boundless laughs, too.” New Yorker cartoons had always been timely. It was just that by the 1990s time had sped up, and the cartoons needed to keep pace.
CHAPTER NINE
SEINFELD AND THE CARTOON EPISODE
I didn’t take the criticisms in the New York Times article to heart. For the most part, people were comparing the cartoons in any given issue with the best, most anthologized cartoons of the past, favorites they remembered and revered. No one recalls cartoons they didn’t like.
I’m a big fan of the great cartoons of the past. After all, they were pretty much what went into The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, which I edited. But I didn’t have any trouble finding cartoons from after I became cartoon editor that could hold their own with the classics of yesteryear.
“Scotch and toilet water?”
“I don’t care if she is a tape dispenser. I love her.”
“Paper or plastic?”
“Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to feel.”
These cartoons are now among the ones people look back on when they complain that New Yorker cartoons aren’t as good as they used to be.
They were done by, respectively, Leo Cullum, Sam Gross, Bud Handels
man, Tom Cheney, and Bruce Eric Kaplan.
Kaplan is both a renowned New Yorker cartoonist and an established sitcom writer, as well as a producer of such shows as Six Feet Under and Girls. He’s responsible for the famous—or perhaps I should say infamous—Seinfeld “cartoon episode,” in which Elaine is obsessed with a cartoon in The New Yorker she doesn’t “get.” The show aired in 1998, not long after I had become cartoon editor, and my initial reaction to it was “Et tu, Bruce?” But over time the episode has grown on me, and I realize it’s an excellent way to compare fiction with reality, to explain how the cartoon department operates and contemplate how humor works without taking too much of the fun and funny out of it.
To do so, I’ve created a stripped-down comic-strip version of the episode that includes just the pertinent cartoon parts.
Let’s start with the scene in the diner where Elaine is perplexed by the cartoon.
Elaine is determined to crack the code. So, under the pretext of hiring some New Yorker cartoonists to illustrate the J. Peterman catalog, Elaine gets to see the cartoon editor, who has the surname Elinoff. (I wish they had used my name, but I had to settle for the last three letters.) Elaine’s real purpose is to make Elinoff admit that the cartoon doesn’t make any sense.