The Documentary That Every Aspiring Cartoonist Should Watch

This is a review of the documentary Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists. Directed by Leah Wolchok, "the film goes behind-the-scenes of The New Yorker and introduces the cartooning legends and hopefuls who create the iconic cartoons that have inspired, baffled—and occasionally pissed off—all of us for decades." The documentary featured several of the magazine's most prolific cartoonists - George Booth, Roz Chast, Drew Dernavich, Mort Gerberg, Sam Gross, Ed Steed, Bob Mankoff, and many more. The film won an Emmy in 2016.

Released and aired by HBO in 2015, Very Semi-Serious is a documentary that offers the viewer a picture of The New Yorker’s cartoon culture. Considered as the last bastion of the cartooning industry (of the humor and gags category), The New Yorker doesn’t just publish and print funny cartoons. It publishes and prints funny cartoons that adhere to the magazine’s unique sensibilities and aspirations. Just because you can draw funny cartoons doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good fit for the magazine.

A lot of the footage in the documentary were shot inside the magazine’s offices, as it should be. Cartoonists aspiring to crack the pages of the magazine should take full notes of these scenes as these provide insider tips on how to make it as a cartoonist in the magazine. Several people including the cartoon editor, the art director, and assistants talk in-depth about the kinds of cartoons that get published in the magazine. In one scene, you see them going through a pile of cartoon submissions and dividing them in two paper racks. One rack is marked “Yes” and the other one is marked “No”. Those in the “Yes” rack is one step closer to being published. Those in the “No” rack will be mailed with a rejection letter to the submitter.

Selecting which cartoons get published is a simple yet complicated process. The cartoon editor meets with regular contributors every week. These regular contributors usually submit 8 to 10 ideas each during these weekly meetings. On top of these regular contributors are the thousand or so unsolicited cartoons sent in by mail or hand-delivered. So on average, the magazine’s cartoon department goes through 1000 to 1500 cartoons every week. Only 15 to 20 of these are chosen and bought by the magazine for publication.

Several of the magazine’s regular contributors are in the documentary talking about how they made it as cartoonists. If there’s one glue that keeps their experiences together, that glue is named “patience”. One cartoonist says he submitted more than 2000 cartoons before his first sale. Another doggedly submitted cartoons for 25 years before his first piece got accepted and published.

Needless to say, the documentary isn’t too encouraging for cartoonists aspiring to crack the pages of The New Yorker. Imagine submitting thousands of cartoons before selling one. Imagine sending in your cartoons for more than two decades before making a sale. And these are just those who made it. How about the hundreds of cartoonists who submitted their work but were never published?

The documentary isn’t all gloom and doom for aspiring cartoonists. A source of inspiration in the film is the story of Liana Finck. We see her entering The New Yorker offices and showing her drawings to the cartoon editor. We see her face get disappointed as the cartoon editor critics her work. We see her get inside the office a few more times. She receives encouraging words from the editor but she is yet to make a sale. Near the end of the documentary, the camera follows Finck as she shows a physical copy of the magazine featuring her first published cartoon. It’s an image of slinkies climbing up the stairs.

Liana Finck is now one of the magazine’s regular contributors. She has a growing number of following online. She has nearly half a million followers on Instagram. She even has a few books under her belt. If you want to get into her work, a good start would be Passing for Human: a Graphic Memoir. It's really good.

Tips on Getting Your Cartoon Published/Printed by the New Yorker Magazine

So you want to be a cartoonist for the New Yorker. As you should already know by now, the opportunities for cartoonists are getting bleaker by the day. Newspapers and magazines which remain to be the most important markets for cartoons are dropping like flies in a windy day. Some are shutting down. Some are moving online. And those that aren’t shutting down have significantly decreased the number of cartoons they print. Or they stopped accepting cartoons altogether.

Compounding the problem is the fact that as markets for cartoons fade away, competition among cartoonists for the remaining markets naturally gets tougher. Getting a cartoon published by a notable magazine these days is next to impossible. 99% of aspiring cartoonists don’t make it. Of the handful that can be considered successful cartoonists, only a few of them do it full-time. Even regular contributors for prestigious magazines like The New Yorker work other jobs because they can’t always expect to have a cartoon published by the magazine every week.

The New Yorker magazine is the Mt. Everest of cartooning. Getting a cartoon in its pages is a huge accomplishment. You’ve done something that 99% of aspiring cartoonists can only dream of. You can use the bragging rights to get more work from outside the magazine.

But here’s the big question: How hard is it to get a cartoon published and printed by the New Yorker magazine? Unfortunately, it’s mission impossible. The competition is unbelievably tough. How tough? Liza Donnelly started submitting cartoons to the magazine in batches in 1977. She sold her first cartoon two years later in 1979.

Even if you get a cartoon printed, that doesn’t mean you get a golden ticket to have your succeeding cartoons printed. Donnelly said that after her first cartoon was bought by the magazine, the odds of getting her next cartoons printed were still very low. She submits around 240 cartoons a year to the magazine. The magazine buys an average of 8 cartoons a year from her. She adds that these are the odds for most of her fellow New Yorker cartoonists.

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Robert Mankoff, the former cartoon editor of the New Yorker, sent more than 2,000 cartoons to the magazine before he sold his first one. Some cartoonists have sent more but not one of their work ever graced the pages of the prestigious magazine. David Sipress who is now a regular cartoonist for the magazine had been submitting his work for 25 years before he got in. That’s insane.

To get an idea of how difficult it is to get a cartoon published in the New Yorker, I highly recommend that you read the book, The Rejection Collection by Matthew Diffee. This is a book about unpublished New Yorker cartoons. According to the book, there are about 50 regular cartoonists who submit 10 cartoons each week to the cartoon editor. That’s 500 cartoons a week. That’s not counting the submissions from cartoonists whose work irregularly appears in the magazine. And then there are the thousand or so unsolicited submissions. According to Diffee, unsolicited submissions stand almost no chance of getting in.

The magazine only publishes 14 to 20 cartoons a week. So there you go. Thousands of new cartoons vying for 14 to 20 slots a week. Climbing to the summit of Mt. Everest is probably more difficult than getting a cartoon published in the New Yorker.

But if becoming a New Yorker cartoonist remains to be a goal for you, here are a few practical tips:

1. You must possess an ungodly amount of patience. I repeat, Robert Mankoff submitted more than 2000 cartoons before the magazine bought one. David Sipress submitted unsolicited cartoons for 25 years before he sold one. I would imagine that it’s the same story for most of the magazine’s regular contributors.

2. Go live in New York. Aspiring cartoonists who hand-deliver their cartoons to the magazine’s offices tend to have better chances in getting the cartoon editor’s attention. Proximity to the magazine’s offices also allows you to possibly join one of the weekly meetings by the cartoon editor with cartoonists.

3. Network with cartoonists whose work regularly appears in the magazine. If you listen to the stories of successful New Yorker cartoonists, a lot of them had their work noticed because of who they knew. A friend introduced them to the cartoon editor. Another cartoonist vouched for their work. Just like in any industry, who you know helps a lot in getting your work noticed and printed.

4. David Sipress who has published a great number of cartoons in the magazine says that the magazine rarely publishes puns. So this is probably a theme that you should stay away from.

5. Do it for fun. Do it because you enjoy making cartoons. Do it because you want people to laugh at and appreciate your humor. Just like the 99% of aspiring cartoonists who don’t crack the pages of the magazine, you have the same odds of failing. But even if you do fail, at least you are enjoying the process.

Good luck.