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Pat Bagley Decade!
Nate Beeler Decade!
Daryl Cagle Decade!
Patrick Chappatte Decade!
John Cole Decade!
John Darkow Decade!
Bill Day Decade!
Sean Delonas Decade!
Bob Englehart Decade!
Randall Enos Decade!
Dave Granlund Decade!
Taylor Jones Decade!
Mike Keefe Decade!
Peter Kuper Decade!
Jeff Koterba Decade!
RJ Matson Decade!
Gary McCoy Decade!
Rick McKee Decade!
Milt Priggee Decade!
Bruce Plante Decade!
Steve Sack Decade!
Bill Schorr Decade!
Kevin Siers Decade!
Ed Wexler Decade!
Adam Zyglis Decade!
Chris Weyant Decade!

Randy Remembers the NCS

Tags Avant Garde, Business Week, Escapade, Famous Artists Schools, Fortune, illustration, Monocle, Mother Jones, new york, Randy Enos, Rolling Stone and the Lampoon, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, The Progressive, Time Magazine

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Zyglis Decade!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date January 4, 2020

Adam Zyglis’ favorite cartoons of the past decade are below! Adam is the staff cartoonist for The Buffalo News in New York state and he is a Pulitzer Prize winner. See Adam’s favorite cartoons of the decade on USA Today, where you can click on each cartoon and see it blown up to fill the screen with a pretty, high-resolution image. See the complete archive of Adam’s editorial cartoons here.

Look at our other, great collections of Cartoon Favorites of the Decade, selected by the artists.

Caged: June 20, 2018

March 26, 2013

January 12, 2013

August 29, 2013

April 15, 2014

April 16, 2014

May 14, 2014

December 4, 2015

April 17, 2016

May 27, 2016

May 28, 2016

November 18, 2016

November 30, 2016

February 28, 2017

September 7, 2017

The press: August 16, 2018

Ford and Kavanaugh: September 28, 2018

Eric Garner case: July 17, 2019

The undoing: September 27, 2019

Carved up: October 17, 2019

January 10, 2017

News Newsletter Syndicate

The Big Eye

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date June 21, 2019

My brilliant buddy, Randy Enos remembers working for CBS, see Randy’s archive of editorial cartoons, email Randy Enos –Daryl

Around 1964, I did my very first animation job. It was for CBS and I got to work for the legendary Lou Dorfsman who shaped every aspect of corporate design for CBS in his 40 years there. I was tasked with creating ten, 10 second “teaser” spots which would be used at station breaks on the network.

CBS had just created a break-through technology they called VPA (Vote Profile Analysis) which would hopefully predict the outcome of elections, shortly after voting had begun, with supposedly, a high degree of accuracy. It was top secret. They were going to reveal it when the time was right and the job I had been assigned was to tease the public and build up curiosity until then. We would throw out the letters V P A to the viewers and make everybody wonder what the hell it meant in ten second bits between programs. We also popped the words “Vote Profile Analysis” in small letters in the last few seconds at the bottom of the screen.

So, my first animation experience was to be the manipulation of three simple black type letters into 10 arresting filmic arrangements.

I zoomed a “V” from a tiny dot on the screen to full screenrevolving it upside down while it was joined by “P” which had slid in from the right side. The upside down “V” became an “A” with the addition of the crossbar while the “P” disappeared.

I panned a “V” onto the screen, in another spot, zoomed in to the blackness of the letter and zoomed right back out to reveal that it was now a “P”, then back in and out to reveal the “A”.

I continued on in this fashion, zooming, panning and twirling the letters around through ten variations avoiding the more obvious approach of actually just manipulating the forms into each letter. I kept the letters whole all the time, maintaining their dignity as type forms and not succumbing to “Walt Disney” anthropomorphic transformation or just melding from one letter form to the other.. I felt that it described the “style” of CBS to keep it simple, black and white, elegant movement and transformation.
As simple as it was, and maybe because it was so simple, it became, I think, the most creative endeavor of my short animation career. It’s so compelling to get caught up in the rhythm of a job like that where the ideas just start popping into your brain. It’s good to have a time constraint to work around that forces you to be basic, direct and clean. No time to get “junky” in 10 seconds.

For weeks and weeks before they revealed their proud program that was going to beat all the competition in vote projection, we watched my VPA’s dance around for 10 seconds at every station break.

I haven’t been to the CBS building in many years, so I don’t know what it’s like now, but when I used to go into the building in those days, it wasn’t like going into any other big corporate building; it was carefully designed by Dorfsman (I guess), in every detail. There was the “CBS” typeface that was used everywhere down to the elevator buttons. When you arrived at your floor, there was a spacious waiting area wherein a receptionist sat a plain, clean desk. the décor was of a black and white or subtle grey: floor, rugs, walls, ceiling, etc.. Radiating off this main area there were long corridors going off to the different offices. At the far end of each corridor was the shock of a big square very brightly colored abstract painting. That was the only color. All aspects of the offices were rigidly controlled. Receptionists told me that they couldn’t have even a stray paper clip on their desk. Everything had a place that was design controlled and policed.

When you stepped into that building, you weren’t stepping into a building, you were stepping into a huge, formal piece of graphic design –cool, clean, elegant, black and white.

Down the block sat the NBC building, my next network client, a virtual riot of peacock color.

See Randy’s archive of editorial cartoons, email Randy Enos

Read many more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Historic Max’s

The Real Moby Dick

The Norman Conquests

Man’s Achievements in an Ever Expanding Universe

How to Murder Your Wife

I Yam What I Yam

The Smallest Cartoon Characters in the World

Chicken Gutz

Brought to You in Living Black and White

The Hooker and the Rabbit

Art School Days in the Whorehouse

The Card Trick that Caused a Divorce

The Mysterious Mr. Quist

Monty Python Comes to Town

Riding the Rails

Art School Days in the Whorehouse

Randy Remembers the NCS

Tags animation, CBS, Columbia Television Network, Election 2012, interior design, NBC, new york, offices, Randall, Randy Enos, television, vote, Vote Profile Analysis, VPA

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The Hooker and the Rabbit

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date May 1, 2019

Here’s a memory about Playboy Magazine, from our brilliant cartoonist, Randy Enos.

About 6 years into my tenure at Playboy magazine, they decided to start a comic strip section in the back pages. They already had a strip called Little Annie Fanny by Harvey Kurtzman that had been running for a while and they were keeping that separate from the “Playboy Funnies” which was to be the name of this new feature. They asked me to think of an idea for a strip. They said I could even have a couple of strips if I wanted, so, I started working on some ideas. The first thing that appealed to me was the idea of maybe doing an “old fashioned” looking strip, perhaps modeled after some of my favorites like “Polly And Her Pals” by the great Cliff Sterrett or Harry Hershfield’s, “Abie the Agent”. I tried a few of these amounting to about half a dozen samples and Hugh Hefner picked two. They would alternate, one in each issue.

The first one which I called “5 Cent Mary” derived its moniker from a person I knew of from my youth in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She was a legendary prostitute who worked the fishing piers and dives down in the cobblestoned streets of the city’s wharves. I actually met her once when my father and I were in a diner very early in the morning having breakfast before going fishing. For some reason, I don’t remember how, I knew who she was… maybe my father told me later. Anyway, she sat down beside me and said, “Haven’t I seen you in church?” I think I told her that I didn’t go to church. That was my brief encounter with the famous “5 Cent Mary.” I wish she could have known that I memorialized her in a Playboy comic strip. She probably would have enjoyed that.

I decided that my “5 Cent Mary” would be a street hooker of the late 1800’s and that I would do it in linocut (the medium that I used for my illustrations) to give it a different look than all the other strips. Hefner loved it. Unbeknownst to me, his favorite cartoonist was John Held Jr. and, while I knew little of Held’s work at the time and hadn’t even thought about him when I created Mary, if you do a cartoon in linocut and you draw it in 19^thcentury setting and costuming – BINGO, you get a John Held looking comic strip whether you like it or not! Hefner agreed with me that it should be the only strip in the Funnies section in black and white. He always loved it even when I had some pretty bad gags.

On two occasions, Hefner scribbled a little suggestion for me. One was for “Reg’lar Rabbit” where he drew a suggested expression for the rabbit and the other was on Mary where he suggested a little figure to fill an awkward space I had left in one panel.

The other cartoon he picked was “Reg’lar Rabbit”. My character was a horny little Farmer Brown-type of country hick who was always chasing the ladies. Reg’lar was drawn in a simple conventional pen and ink style with the addition of adhesive color. Doing “Reg’lar” was a nice break in my normal lino-cut illustration activity for the next 6 years.

A wonderful woman named Michelle Urry (who died young, unfortunately) was much beloved by the Playboy cartoonists’ community and was our contact with Playboy in the New York office. The strips and the gag cartoons for the magazine were collected up by her and taken to Chicago once a month where she would go over everything with Hef, who was always the final word on cartoons. On two occasions, he scribbled a little suggestion for me. One was for “Reg’lar Rabbit” where he drew a suggested expression for the rabbit and the other was on Mary where he suggested a little figure to fill an awkward space I had left in one panel. I’ve kept these crude little “notes” all these years. After all, how many people have an original Hugh Hefner cartoon?

Some of the other cartoonists that did strips included Bobby London, Chris Browne, Art Spielgelman, Lou Brooks, Jay Lynch, Mort Gerberg and more..

One year, we cartoonists were all invited to a special Playboy cartoonists’ party at the Drake Hotel in New York. I first met my long-time friend Elwood Smith at that party. As the evening wore on and the drinking accelerated to a spectacular pace, an odd thing happened in a side room in the suite. Michelle Urry had gone in there and came out screaming, “Are you all crazy… what is wrong with you???”

Well, I hadn’t been in that room so I rushed in to see what it was all about, and there my eyes beheld an amazing sight. All over the smooth, pristine, pale, muted walls of the sedate hotel room, several cartoonists had profusely, and I mean PROFUSELY scribbled cartoons with ball-point pens.

Some of them were pretty darn good, too!

Email Randy Enos

Here’s young Randy with his buddy, Elwood Smith. (I’ve always been a big Elwood Smith fan too –Daryl)

Read more more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

The Card Trick that Caused a Divorce

The Mysterious Mr. Quist

Monty Python Comes to Town

Riding the Rails

Randy Remembers the National Cartoonists Society

Tags Abie the Agent, Art Spiegelman, Bobby London, Chris Browne, Drake Hotel, Elwood Smith, Harry Hershfield, Harvey Kurtzman, Hugh Hefner, Jay Lynch, John Held Jr., Little Annie Fanny, Lou Brooks, Michelle Urry, Mort Gerberg, new york, Playboy Magazine, Polly and her Pals.Cliff Sterrett, Reg'ler Rabbit

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Riding the Rails

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date April 10, 2019

Here’s another flashback from my cartoonist buddy, Randy Enos. Like Randy, I also lived in Connecticut’s and took the train into Manhattan to visit art directors and deliver my art –back in the 1980’s (for me), and earlier, that was the thing cartoonists did. After Federal Express and fax machines came into being, illustrators and cartoonists moved away and the Manhattan cartooning and illustration culture was lost. I miss it. –Daryl

The name of our train station in Westport is “Westport Saugatuck” or, as one wag of a conductor once announced … “WESTTUCK and SAUGAPORT”.

What’s in the bag?

I loved riding the old trains before they started looking like subway cars with the sliding doors. We used to have to climb the steps up into the train and when I would hop on about noontime, I was able to go into the dining car and eat a hearty hot lunch (or dinner as we called it when I was very young). My favorite thing was to relax in the dining car watching the landscape whirring by while a waiter would bring me my meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy and apple pie for dessert. For years, I was a night worker going to bed at 4 in the morning and waking up about 10 or 11 and hopping on that train to deliver work and pick up more in New York City. At the New York Times, for instance, the art directors didn’t even get in to work until noon.

It was either you got on the train to deliver a job or you could give a train conductor five bucks to deliver it for you in the city on his break as soon as he got to Grand Central. It wasn’t unusual to see, on the platform, a stubble-faced sleepy-looking illustrator wearing a bathrobe and clutching an envelope with his art in it looking for a willing conductor. The other thing we would do was to use the services of Ryder’s Stagecoach to deliver our art. You could take your work to Ryder’s house at any time in the early morning, like 3 or 4 and you’d go to the back screen door and quietly stick it in there for him hopefully without waking the dog. That damn dog would often wake up and bark, though.

Randy’s wife, Leann, with Randy’s 6 foot Black Indigo.

When I worked at the Famous Artists School, we would get a 3 week vacation in the summer. In my 8 years working there, I never took a vacation. I would, instead, take my vacations one day a week and use that day to go to the city to see art directors and try to sell my work.

I had pet snakes, a 6 foot Black Indigo and a 5 foot Gopher Snake. I used to take them to New York with me sometimes because my art directors wanted to see them. We’d let them slither down the hallways past the shocked secretaries at NBC.

One day, I was sitting on the train with the white laundry bag containing my 6 foot snake resting quietly on my lap as the conductor approached punching tickets. He knew me very well and often would just make believe he was punching my ticket, thus giving me a free ride. That day, as he was reaching across me to punch the ticket of the lady to my right, the snake, “Satan,” rippled in the bag. The astonished trainman said, “Randy –I do not want to know what you have in that bag!”

One time, because the trainmen knew my wife and I so well (they would often sit and talk with us when they weren’t picking up tickets) that they let Leann drive the train home. My wife was an actress and she travelled the train a lot too.

On Thursdays, I would sit with all the New Yorker cartoonists going in to show their roughs. My neighbor, Don Reilly, was always there with his friend Dana Fradon and sitting across the aisle from us would be Whitney Darrow or Bob Weber (who never had his roughs done and would do them on the train). One time I watched Whitney off to the side on the train platform in Westport, drawing a guy waiting for the train. Later, that same day, I encountered him hiding in a doorway, way uptown in the city, surreptitiously drawing a lady waiting for a bus.

Along with the artists, the morning trains out of Westport carried most of the Madison Avenue advertising world. On the way home, we often had to ride in what we called “cattle cars” which had no windows and no seats. I used to see some of the richest tycoons of advertising, finance, etc. sitting on their briefcases, lurching around in the densely smoke-filled car while reading their evening paper.

One day, the regular train wasn’t working out of Westport and along comes this shiny new- looking train car. It was a private train that a lot of really rich guys owned and it had been enlisted by the New Haven Railroad to help out in the crisis. So, that day, I travelled in luxury with stewards that took your coat and hat and brushed them off. Very plush seats –the works!

One evening the train home broke down in the proverbial “middle of nowhere”. There was no train coming to save us so the whole train disgorged its riders and we all slumped along the tracks with our gear looking for some sign of humanity in the darkness. We finally came to a small house. We all camped out in the front yard while a few guys went to knock on the door to see if we could use the phone. A startled family, who were in the process of eating their supper, graciously allowed the long line of weary commuters to enter and use the wall phone. Some time later, the cars with the wives started arriving to pick us up off the front yard, one at a time.

But, I guess the oddest thing I saw on the train was one evening, very late, about 11 or so at night. I walked down the train at Grand Central to board and noticed that all the back cars were dark but I saw a little movement in them as I passed. There were people in there, in the dark! I got on in the first lighted car I found and I was only one of two people in the car. A little while into our trip, the other guy in my car asked the conductor if he was going to be opening the rear car. The conductor said he would open it in a while. Sure enough, in a while he came back and the passenger followed him to the back door where the conductor unlocked it, took something passed to him by the man and then locked it behind him.

You see, Westport is next to a city named Norwalk. A lot of girls from Norwalk would travel into New York every day to ply their “trade.” They would then ride the late train back. Sometimes they would be sitting opposite me on the train and ask to use my portfolio as a card table. I, also, had once seen a very famous game show host (I will refrain from naming him) being “entertained” by one of them in a back seat while I was in a front seat being the only other person in the car.

So… I realized what was going on the dark back cars. Some conductors evidently had a little business going. I was riding in a rolling brothel!

–Randy Enos

Email Randy

Read more more of Randy’s cartooning memories:

Randy Remembers the National Cartoonists Society

Tags commuter train, connecticut, Conrail, new york, New Yorker Cartoonists

Blog Newsletter Syndicate

The Day I Chased the Bus

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date April 3, 2019

Here’s another story about being a freelance illustrator in New York in the 1970’s, from my brilliant cartoonist buddy, Randy Enos.
–Daryl

Some years ago I went into New York City with my young friend, an aspiring illustrator named Debbie; I was going to take her on my rounds with me and introduce her to art directors at NBC, New York Times, National Lampoon and more. I had been working on some big project and I was lugging my biggest black portfolio. I had to show some work to a client and then I was going to go home that evening and work some more on the project and return the next day.

This morning was going along nicely and before we were to have lunch, I thought we’d quickly go to a show of Jean-Michel Folon’s work at the LeFebre Gallery at 47 E. 77^thStreet. We hopped into a cab and arrived across the street from the gallery/townhouse. As I crossed the street with Debbie, I patted my pockets, as I was accustomed to do, to make sure I had everything … and … I discovered my wallet was missing! I realized it must have fallen out in the cab. I whirled around and the cab was gone! Panic!

We went in to see the show, anyway, which, ironically, consisted of collages in which there were actual coins. Each piece of art re-enforced my sense of present poverty.

Back out on the street, we assessed our financial situation. Between the two of us, we just had enough coins to get us back down near Grand Central Station by bus. So, we got on a 5^thAvenue bus and headed downtown. As we approached 52^ndStreet, Debbie said she wanted to visit her new acquaintance, the illustrator, Bob Blechman so I told her to get off there and I would continue down to one of the next stops, visit my art directors at NBC, and we would meet later on the train to go home.

At 49^thstreet, I hopped off and walked a few steps up the street before I realized that I wasn’t carrying my big portfolio with all the components of the job I was working on. I had shoved it into the space behind the driver’s seat while we had stood in the aisle of the bus. I looked south on 5^thAvenue to find my bus and instead I saw about three identical blue busses. Fortunately, I had looked at the driver when I was on the bus and he was a large black man. So, I ran quickly to overtake the nearest bus to me. As I caught up with it, at the next stop, I saw that it wasn’t my driver.

I started running to catch up with the next bus in front of that one. Again, not my driver. It was hot and I was out of breath at this point and panic was setting in as I imagined my fate of losing my portfolio and its contents to the vast black hole of the New York Transit Authority. Who do I call? What do I do? I started running again. I could see that there were two or three busses approaching the library stop at 42^ndStreet. Big stop. I was sure to find my bus there. My hopes were up. I ran like I have never run and probably will never run again. I swear, as I crossed 41^stStreet, I think I was running over the hoods of cars. I felt this was my last chance. As I got there, a bus or two had pulled away but there were still one or two left. I checked them out……. not my driver! I looked down the avenue. I couldn’t run any more. My chest was heaving, I was sweating.

Just then, a police car came creeping up. AHA! I dragged myself over to the curb and flagged them down. The window went down. I … I … tried… to … tell … them my problem. I was incoherent. The two cops looked at me puzzled. I kept trying to get the words out but I couldn’t catch my breath. They gestured for me to get in the car. I collapsed into their back seat telling them, as best I could about the lost money, the portfolio and the big black bus driver. The cop next to the driver said, “What was the number of the bus?” The number of the bus? The number of the freaking bus? How the hell did I know what the number of the bus was! He then instructed the driver to overtake the bus we saw ahead of us and see if a “n****r “ was driving. We caught up with it and driving by the left side we could see that it wasn’t my driver. I pleaded with them to catch up with a few other busses we could see. They did… to no avail. Finally at 23^rdStreet, where 5^thAvenue forks, they tired of me and decided that I should consult the bus dispatcher we could see on the curb at our left. “He’ll help you out” they said. I went over to the man holding a clipboard and started telling him my tale of woe. As I was speaking, I looked across the fork in the avenue and saw a bus pulling away… WITH A BIG BLACK GUY DRIVING!!! The dispatcher blew a whistle and flagged him to stop. I ran across and the driver opened the door and there was my big black portfolio just where I had left it!

I slowly dragged myself along the street completely worn out with my precious portfolio in tow while a crazy bag lady screamed something at me. I paid no attention for I was now concerned with how I was going to explain why I didn’t have a ticket to the train conductor, because it was in my lost wallet where I always put them. BUT … maybe not. Sometimes I put them in my shirt pocket. I patted my pocket. My ticket was there. A little wave of joy … just a teensy one, wafted over me.

As I slunk into my train seat next to the ebullient Debbie, she was chortling about her visit with Blechman. She asked if I had a good time at NBC. I grumbled something incoherent and glared her into silence.

At home that night, I received a phone call from the man who had gotten into the cab right after me and found my wallet and my phone number therein. I told him that I was coming in the next day and he gave me his business address.

The next day, in a downpour, I trudged across the street from Grand Central to a small liquor store to buy my benefactor a nice bottle of wine. Then, with bottle in hand along with my portfolio and umbrella, I made my way up the street to the address he had given me. It was a labor union office. I climbed up a narrow stairway on which were seated a few of their members to a little office at the top with a little pay window. I asked for the man who had called me and I was directed down a hall to an office from which I could hear serious negotiations transpiring. I dragged my dripping self to the open door and was spotted by a robust fellow standing behind a desk in the midst of an argument.

He spotted me, “I know who you are” he smiled, “I saw your driver’s license picture in your wallet.”

He drew my wallet from his drawer and handed it to me. I, in turn, handed him a soggy bag which contained my gift of wine.

“No… NO” he said, “I can’t take that!”

“Please take this” I said

“No, I couldn’t take that!”

“Yes, you have to take it!”

“Oh no no no, I can’t accept that!”

Finally, I screamed, “LOOK… IT’S POURING OUTSIDE… I’M SOAKING WET AND I’M LUGGING THIS BIG HEAVY PORTFOLIO AND THIS DAMN UMBRELLA AND I’M NOT CARRYING THIS BOTTLE OF WINE ANOTHER STEP!”

“Oh… okay” he said, “Thanks!”

–Randy Enos

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Read more more of Randy’s cartooning memories: