Thoughts On The Cartoon Caption Contest And A Poll!

Drawings and words, together or not

The New Yorker has a feature at the back of the magazine each week called the Cartoon Caption Contest. It is hugely popular, and it’s been around at least a decade.

This week in the magazine, they used one of my drawings for the contest. The way it works is that we cartoonists submit our drawings every Tuesday to the cartoon editor, via email. By Friday, we hear by email if they want to buy one—either a full cartoon (caption and drawing) or a caption contest cartoon. The caption contest cartoons are ones we have drawn with captions of our own, and they want to remove our caption to use the image for the contest. These are usually unusual drawings, often a bit whacky or off-beat, and that’s why they want to use it for the contest. Sometimes cartoonists send in just a drawing, in hopes they buy it for the contest. And clearly, cartoons that are meant to be captionless won’t work for the contest.

Here is mine from this week. I enjoyed drawing this. I won’t tell you my caption because it might not be something they want me to do!

Yes, it is difficult to let the caption go, give it up. But it’s okay. I’ve come to appreciate the Cartoon Caption Contest because it engages the viewers and they appreciate what we do maybe a bit more!

Do you like the Cartoon Caption Contest?