Bob Eckstein’s cartoon has three distinct frames of reference — Halloween, the election, and the pandemic. Addressing all three is a challenge. The woman who’s next in line for the voting booth is speaking. She’s also pointing with her left index finger, but at what? The skeleton? The man in the voting booth? Or is…
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“Library Cadavers” Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood
Jeremy Nguyen’s cartoon is set in a library, where cadavers—their bodies covered with sheets, their left toes tagged—are stretched out on every available surface. Two librarians, one male and one female, are looking at a cadaver that’s on a bookcase in front of a “new arrivals” sign. The female librarian is speaking. Because corpses need…
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“Sheep Herding” Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood
A few weeks ago, we featured a Lars Kenseth cartoon that was set in an office building, where a wizard carrying a banker’s box (implying that he had just been fired or laid-off) was addressing his colleague. It therefore had two strikingly disparate frames of reference—downsizing at the workplace, and the wizard’s magical powers—and the…
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“Peter’s Rabbit” Caption Contest Commentary with Lawrence Wood
In Peter Kuper’s cartoon, a man on the sidewalk is looking up at a gigantic rabbit, and the rabbit is talking. Peter and I have collaborated on several cartoons, three of which have been published in The New Yorker, and we already tried collaborating on this drawing. Peter’s original caption (“I’m not invisible, and I’m…
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