The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
"It’s such a nice day,"
I will make some of these free… But this one is again just for y’all paying few.
Poems:
“Before I Can Exist, I Have to Enter the Gift Shoppe” by Lisa Russ Sparr: Deliberately ultra-clunky rhyming couplets in what’s almost a satire of light verse, asking – isn’t consumerism pretty fucking awful? Yeah, it is, though I’m not sure there’s enough profundity in that observation to quite pull off a poem. Things get repetitive even in these fourteen lines. The magazine has an obligation to occasionally get Ogden Nashy with it, I say, and this is a decent effort at presenting modern (read: fucking depressing) themes in such a fashion. But it doesn’t leave a mark.
“In Praise of Machado de Assis” by David Lehman: I barely know de Assis – I can pick him out as Brazilian, that’s about it. So I assume this is largely going over my head. There’s a smoky solidity to it, for sure; it’s thinky but casual. The repetitive titles… I don’t know what to do with. Some of the philosophical musings are pretty obscure to me. Still, there’s something here that works very well –the sort of deep wisdom that demands to be concealed in a confusing joke. You puzzle over it, and maybe eventually the lock comes undone.
Cartoons:
Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.
Cover: A charming sketch, and I love the Manhattan Bridge, which I’d take over the Brooklyn Bridge most days. That’s an awfully tiny cup of coffee – maybe it’s meant to be an espresso mug? But it’s the wrong shape…
Pg. 13: The word “annoying” over-telegraphs the emotion & thus saps this of its humor. Replace it with “and” and this is five times better.
Pg. 20: A little wordy. And isn’t it funnier if the kid is just, like, crawling near the tiny piano? The visual hardly conveys “struggling”.
Pg. 22: Unclear setup leads to even less clear punchline.
Pg. 29: A duck is an interesting choice, I don’t think of it as one of the standard Old McDonald animals, but I suppose it has a steeliness (lacking in a cow, say) that allows it to pull off this punchline. It works.
Pg. 32: Deliberate mundanity still fails to arouse much of a reaction in me. I do like “I see.”
Pg. 34: Distracted by Obama front row center.
Pg. 39: I suppose this is riffing on TV-show “previously on” segments – but streaming services have basically killed those, so it feels out-of-date.
Pg. 41: Still drawing the detective with a pissed-off face really makes this. And the little animals. Best of the Week.
Pg. 42: Unfortunately, it’s mostly all still garbage.
Pg. 44: Polyphemus: The Early Years. (We’re reading The Odyssey in my ELA class.)
Pg. 49: I think it’s more likely that we trained ourselves to view disease vectors as disgusting than that there’s some inherent aesthetic quality to cockroaches that needs fixing. Maybe that’s the joke…
Pg. 54: There are ATMs everywhere for those with the eyes to see.
Pg. 60: Cranking the “zany” and “just plain stupid” knobs all the way up to see if I get any sick distortion effects.
9 Years Ago Today
A really strong issue from late-era Mankoff. I’m not especially a Mankoff apologist, but… I dunno, sometimes I feel the Emma Allen era has lacked a certain joie.
the noise that Tarzan makes