October 22, 2024

The Cartoon & Poem Supplement

The Cartoon & Poem Supplement

"It’s all there, but…"

This week’s supplement is free! Enjoy.

Poems:

“As We Made Him” by Elizabeth Metzger: A kinda-ghazal, coming at its subject sidelong (does the kid have a disability, is it a metaphor, something else?) but with a strange and haunted romance – blue curtains, flickering flame. The repetition mostly works, though I’m not sure if the disjunction in the second stanza’s second line, where the repeating phrase crops up awkwardly, is meant to jam and chafe – maybe. The last two lines try to reveal something, but I don’t know if it’s the right thing – I was already there re: haunting and forgetting; I was still hoping for a more concrete sense of what “regression” is at play. Don’t get me wrong – this is misty, lovely, strong.

“Meaning of the Word ‘Never’” by Deborah Garrison: Either deceptively simple or deceptively deceptive in its simplicity – I’m not sure. Yes, it’s just one image, but that ending does prod an opening-up of everything pretty blatantly; you have to work to take this at face value. But it’s stronger, I think, if you do – if you can resist the Our Town of it all, the opening-up into weepy nostalgia that’s implied but not stated, what’s actually here is starry and spare, and I’m with Garrison in childhood’s “strangely blissful loneliness / and insomnia”, I have those memories too, which drift out of grasp – faces in swaying trees silhouetted in my window, the red digital face of the alarm playing the same few Joni Mitchell and John Mayer tracks… your reverie may rush in, too. Meet it where it is.

Cartoons:

Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.

Cover: Hard to argue with this for the Money issue – it’s striking, graphic, fun, and will look great in print.

Pg. 15: This is a prize-winner in going an awfully long way for an awfully minor gripe.

Pg. 18: Kaplan’s scenes are usually crowded, so it comes as news that he draws a fantastic empty room. Fun.

Pg. 20: File under: If it would be misogynist with the genders swapped, it might be trite!

Pg. 26: Horribles D’oeuvres

Pg. 29: Just terrible! Not only would I not laugh if someone said this in real life, I might curse them out!

Pg. 34: Got a real, full-blown laugh. As I often repeat, it helps so much to not overdraw emotions – if the joke’s strong, it’ll read. Best of the Week.

Pg. 37: Aaaand speaking of overdrawing emotions…

Pg. 40: Hmm.. What if they didn’t have adjectives yet? To me, “Fire! …Fire? …Fire? …Fire!” is about ten times funnier.

Pg. 43: Took me way too long to realize that’s supposed to be (I think?) a security camera. Looks more like a tiny tank on a stick.

Pg. 44: The “absurdly heightened version of an everyday gripe” joke rarely works well, because it can seem like the teller is so pissed about the tiny gripe that they’re making up scenarios where it actually is a big deal.

Pg. 49: MPJ today stands for Multiple Payments to Joggers.¹

Pg. 50: Surprisingly zany for Sipress, but I don’t mind it. Excellent demons.

Pg. 52: FOMO: fear of migratory obligation?

Pg. 55: Kinda thought the whole schtick was that the monopoly man had tons of play money, hence the outfit; shouldn’t the battleship and the iron and the thimble be fretting instead?

Pg. 56-57 [Sketchbook]: As always with Blitt, consistently charming drawings are often undone by excessive goofiness. I think three here work well enough: Page, Wynn, and Bezos. And only the Page even made me smile. (I think the “is said to” goes a long way.) It has the least distinctive drawing, though; I think the Steve Ballmer, sans caption, would be a pretty excellent artwork.

Pg. 61: Noooo don’t go to Steve Harvey for your couples counseling nooooooo

Pg. 67: This is millimeters of irony away from a motivational poster with a caption like “Face your problems head-butt on”.

Pg. 72: Talk to your doctor about Bupropion!

24 Years Ago Today

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