The perfect end-of-year post would be a final installment about the perfect cartoon. Michael Maslin has published more than seven hundred cartoons) in The New Yorker, and he chronicles everything involving New Yorker cartoons and cartoonists at Ink Spill. I often go there myself to find out what I’m doing.
When I asked Michael to pick his perfect cartoon, I was pretty sure who the cartoonist would be. When Michael’s cartoons started appearing in the magazine in the late seventies, the influence of his idol, James Thurber, was clear:
Over the years, Michael’s cartoons have become completely his own, but Thurber remains an inspiration:
Michael told me he was torn between two Thurber cartoons:
He added:
“What Have You Done with Dr. Millmoss?” changed my life. It was the first Thurber drawing I ever saw and the first New Yorker cartoon that ever meant anything to me. It would be easy to say the seal drawing—Thurber’s most popular—is perfection itself, and in so many ways it is, but I’d go with Millmoss.
The woman is classic Thurber, but look closely at the hippopotamus: at its eye and its eyebrow, at the curve of the mouth. What is that expression? There’s no answer. And so you look again, and again. I’ve been looking for thirty-five years.
The caption is short and uncomplicated, and Thurber didn’t try for a “funny” name for the doctor. And other than his name, all that’s left of Dr. Millmoss is the pipe, the shoe, and the hat. Try covering them up with your finger. The drawing works O.K. without them, but with them it’s a masterpiece.
