Back to the old drawing board

Cartoons by the NEW YORKER's Peter Arno. I showed more Arno cartoons here.

From THE 1942 NEW YORKER ALBUM. Copyright © 1941 Random House.
Copyright © 1939-1941 The New Yorker.












As much as I love the NEW YORKER cartoon history, I was disappointed by the DVD-ROM, containing over 70,000 cartoons, included with the volume THE COMPLETE CARTOONS OF THE NEW YORKER.

I have not seen the CD-ROM version of this set, but can't imagine it could be much different. The cartoons on the DVD-ROM are organized chronologically by year. I would have much preferred to have an index of artists and been able to call up all of the Arno, or R. Taylor, Syd Hoff, or Charles Addams, for instance, but that's not a feature. So in order to find this Arno cartoon, the famous "Back to the drawing board," I had to go through the year 1941 until I found it.

Besides that disadvantage, the cartoons are presented in a PDF format, and can be enlarged or reduced, but are scanned at such a low resolution that many of the fine details are lost. The only cartoons for which the low rez seems to be an advantage are the line drawings. On the other hand, the book itself is a bargain at $19.99: 670 pages, with many of the best of the NEW YORKER represented. Personally, I'll keep the book and put the DVD-ROM in my files for any future reference I might need, if I'm up to the laborious process of going through each year to find what I need.

It's what's up front that counts!

More lively lovelies from THE GREAT AMERICAN PIN-UP CALENDAR.

Copyright © 2004 TASCHEN

More VIP DEAD GAME SPORTSMEN

More of VIP's classic cartoons. From THE DEAD GAME SPORTSMEN. The first set of cartoons can be found here.

Copyright © 1954 Virgil Franklin Partch

"...ain't nothin' in the world like a big-eyed girl..."

MEN'S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES, a bargain book from Taschen put out as one of their 25th anniversary selections, is an outstanding collection of covers from American men's magazines of 30 to 50+ years ago. As I went through it I couldn't help but notice one face repeated. Artist Clarence Doore used a very distinctive female model with wide, terrified eyes. On most of the covers she's in some sort of peril, either from animal or person, but on some she's actually the aggressor. On some covers she's blonde, or brunette, or even African! She also appears as twins or triplets.

I know nothing of Doore, but he was a good illustrator, and did a number of outstanding covers. That poor girl really went through a lot for him.

MEN'S ADVENTURE MAGAZINES, Copyright © 2008 TASCHEN GmbH