Funny Stuff: How Great Cartoonists Make Great Cartoons

Phil Witte and Rex Hesner's, two cartoonists, dissect the single-panel gag cartoon as a medium and attempt to pin down what makes the best of them great.

The book is filled with great cartoons and is peppered with quotes from legendary New Yorker cartoonists such as Roz Chast, Sam Gross, and Mick Stevens. Witte and Hesner’s admiration for the craft is clear, and I love that they treat cartooning as a legitimate art form.

One of my favorite parts is the overview of recurring themes and stock characters in cartoons, from desert islands to pirates, and the peek at how cartoonists subvert these conventions. The authors also provide a nuanced discussion of different types of humor—observational, absurd, satirical, etc.—breaking down the show more importance of wording in captions, plus the unique challenges of cartoons without captions.

While I can't say I learned much that was new, I still enjoyed this more than two other books on the subject that I recently read, Lawrence Wood's Your Caption Has Been Selected: More Than Anyone Could Possibly Want to Know About The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest and Bob Mankoff's The Naked Cartoonist: A New Way to Enhance Your Creativity, because the authors here took care of not making the book about themselves.

My only qualm was that they seem to think that Edward Steed can't draw—I honestly don't get it, I think he's a fantastic draftsman. Well worth reading nonetheless. show less