The Best of the Rejection Collection: 297 Cartoons That Were Too Dark, Too Weird, or Too Dirty for The New Yorker

by Matthew Diffee

The best of the worst: these cartoons rejected by The New Yorker were deemed too dumb, too weird, or too naughty—but not for lack of laughs! Every week, hundreds and hundreds of cartoons pour into The New Yorker. Most are rejected. Doesn’t matter how big a deal the cartoonist is, either. Roz Chast, David Sipress, Kim Warp, Sam gross, Ed Steed, Emily Flake, Navied Mahdavian, or Mary Lawton—if the work in question is too weird, too naughty, too juvenile, or too dark, it’s out. Luckily for us, Matthew Diffee has been bravely sifting through the circular file to rescue the best of the worst. Here are 297 cartoons in a revised second edition featuring more than 50 new cartoons—even better, even worse! The cartoon set-ups may be familiar—a couple in bed, a few people stranded on a desert island, a doctor and patient in an examining room—but the joke are anything but, with twists so unexpected, you can’t help but laugh out loud.

• ISBN10: 1523512393
• ISBN13: 9781523512393
• Publish Date: 24 May 2022 (first published 19 October 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Workman Publishing
• Imprint: Workman Adult
• Edition: Second Edition, Second Edition
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Best of the Rejection Collection is precisely as stated on the cover - a well curated collection of worthy New Yorker cartoons which didn't make the cut for one reason or another. Released 10th May 2022 by Workman Publishing, it's 384 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a collection of artists' works along with a short Q&A full of witty answers from each of them. Questions are the same for all contributors with questions ranging from "Where do you get your ideas" to "Have you mooned or been mooned more often in your life?", "What would make a terrible pizza topping?" (some really funny and outré answers), and "What’s the funniest thing that you witnessed, overheard, or came up with that you couldn’t figure out how to use in a cartoon?"

The following pages for each artist contains facsimiles of some of their rejected works.

The cartoons are funny, irreverent (some very much so), NSFW, or too direct and include things like a grandson berating his grandfather for the lack of color film from Auschwitz, Jesus hanging ten upside down (sans surfboard) on a monster wave, and a surprising number of inappropriate bestiality implications (which I freely admit made me giggle/snort for the most part).

Four stars. This would make a good selection for public library acquisition as well as for fans of the New Yorker type of sophisticated humor. I confess to not being up-to-date on selection criteria for public library acquisitions in the wake of recent challenges in the USA, but I don't think any of these should pose any real problems, even in the current climate.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.