Sometimes it’s quite clear when there is a first, other times it’s not. As a cartoonist who is a woman for The New Yorker, I am interested in those who came before me. In part because historically, we have been in the minority. One can say with some assurance that the first woman to publish a cartoon in The New Yorker was Ethel Plummer, in the innaugural issue of the magazine in 1925. All the other cartoonists in that issue were men, we are pretty sure. Gender identity and sexual preference was fluid in the twenties (more so than subsequent decades, until recently), so perhaps we will never be absolutely certain.
Ethel was an established illustrator in NYC when she submitted to The New Yorker. She was also a feminist, doing drawings like the one below for the cause of Suffrage for Women. This was a poster that hung around the city, often at movie theaters and the like, with the caption below it.
She was in the show, Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Women Artists for the Benefit of Woman Suffrage Campaign at the Macbeth Gallery. Plummer was also Vice President of the Society of Illustrators, an organization and museum still very active in New York (and where I have curated a few exhibits, one celebrating women cartoonists).
We can’t say definitively who the first cartoonist of color in The New Yorker was. But the first Black woman cartoonist at the magazine may have been Emily Sanders Hopkins, who began contributing in 2004. But is not something we can say with certainty, not knowing the racial identity of every cartoonist from 1925–2004. Emily is a writer and cartoonist who lives in Syracuse, New York.
The first woman cartoonist of Asian descent for The New Yorker may be Amy Hwang, who began at the magazine in 2010. Amy lives and works in Scarsdale, NY.
What do firsts mean? They are important to take note of because not only are firsts often hard won, they demonstrate to us how imbalanced and unequal things are. How much one’s gender, ethnic or racial identity enters into what one draws is a personal thing, each cartoonist is different. Each generation also handles the issue differently in terms of subject matter or style. I believe one cannot categorize groups of people according to their identity; we are artists and create from our personhood. How we identify is part of creation — inescapable, in fact — but is unique in each and every instance.
My writing focuses on The New Yorker, but there are many other firsts in the world of comics and cartoons. Notably, Jacki Ormes was possibly the first Black woman comic strip artist in the US.
In 2005, I wrote a book about women cartoonists from The New Yorker from 1925–2005, called Funny Ladies. Along with over a dozen women, Ethel and Emily were in the book, but Amy was not yet. She will be in the new edition due out in February of 2022, along with many new cartoonists. It includes a forward by Editor David Remnick and Cartoon Editor Emma Allen and new chapters by me. There are so many more women now, and I profiled many more of them — and some additional firsts — in the new edition. You can pre-order here.