The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
"I said, ‘Your approval means nothing to me’"
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Poems:
“Mushroom Hunting at the Ski Basin” by Arthur Sze: Sze’s eternal theme is the euphoria of nature; that’s present here, and if the “unseen web of mycelium” narrative is a little tired at this point (we may all be connected, but a mushroom is not a metaphor), well, the solid counterargument is that mushrooms are fucking cool.
“Against the Encroaching Grays” by C.D. Wright: This is a small masterpiece. One of Wright’s last poems, presumably, or at least something unpublished when she died in 2016, this is a “meditation on aging” that makes such phrases sound trite and idiotic – it’s a picture of the heart, how it holds all that is lost; here the lost thing is the Scout, looking out, and the poet is the Scout as well. I go all iambic trying to analyze this; I slip into redundancy. It’s pretty perfect. What is it we struggle against, what is it we “find a way / through”? Wright supposes it’s the self, unsteady on its grasshopper legs.
Cartoons:
Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.
Cover: This is a fairly famous early work by Sherald; it’s pretty well-known and I’m a bit surprised they put it on the magazine since they usually choose new or less-seen work. Online this looks just okay but in print it’s absolutely gorgeous; the blue pops and smears and the skin glows from within. Sherald is wonderful; I’m biased because not only did she work in Baltimore, she’s a Baltimore-to-Jersey-City fellow traveler. For me cropping in on the painting does make its composition a lot less interesting, but it’s still beautiful.
Pg. 15: Second issue in a row to open with a cavemen joke. Trend watch?
Pg. 17 [Sketchpad]: None of the jokes land but I support Sketchpad turning into a venue for bullying the Democrats.
Pg. 21: Inconsistent: The first two are riffs on things comedians say but the last one is a riff on a knock knock joke for children.
Pg. 26: MPJ today stands for Must Put-an-end-to Journey (they can’t all be winners.)
Pg. 28: Et 2 inch clipper guard?
Pg. 33: The usual casual Steed brilliance. I like that they printed this real tiny so you can just barely make out the beaters.
Pg. 37: More oddball than zany, at least; I’ll take it.
Pg. 38: Eesh! I wonder if anyone anywhere will tape this one to their fridge.
Pg. 44: Arguably, this is just the usual make-the-subtext-text joke, but the characters are drawn with enough specificity that it reads as realistic. Best of the Week.
Pg. 45: Is this an A.I. joke?
Pg. 48: Tickled me, both because it’s a solid gag and because it’s just a funny line to hear in a pirate’s voice.
Pg. 49: Even the classroom gets pets jokes now!
Pg. 57: I like how this only works in cartoon-world, where the coffee cup can be perpetually both upright and spilling.
Pg. 62: Horribly overwritten and corny, like bad standup awkwardly transposed into a panel.
Pg. 67: This supposes a world in which the Holy Trinity operates roughly the same way the Greek Gods do, which is a fascinating premise even if the joke doesn’t do much for me.
Pg. 72: Captionless, real emotions in an absurd universe, intricate and well-composed drawing… this checks all my boxes, and while I didn’t chuckle I do think it hits at something latent, and I want to analyze it – something like: We overprepare our neotenic bodies to serve as imagined mythic figures, and find out too late that by the time we’ve stripped down to our vulnerable self, in heart undies, the room has gone cold – The Other, less prepared and thus more ready, scowls at us; we feel shame not just because we’re tardy but because our elaborate encumbrances fill the room.
75 Years Ago Today




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