From Saul Steinberg’s famous “View from Ninth Avenue” to the controversial Barack and Michelle fist pump, the New Yorker cover is generally subtle, often funny and always a talking point. But what about all the drawings and sketches that don’t make the cut?
In Blown Covers, a new book by the magazine’s longtime art editor Françoise Mouly, readers are granted access to these rejects along with fascinating anecdotes about what ran when, and why.
For instance, take the publication’s response to Dick Cheney’s notorious 2006 hunting accident: Cartoonist Barry Blitt initially proposed two rather sinister drawings of the vice-president maiming everyone in sight, including an enraged Uncle Sam and tearful Lady Liberty. But ultimately, the allure of pop culture won out and the magazine went with a chilling riff on the Brokeback Mountain poster.
Other rejected covers include a pregnant John McCain, Michael Jackson as a mall-ready Santa and a donkey doing something rather unfortunate to an elephant (it’s about health care, apparently).
Can’t get enough New Yorker cover bloopers? Stop by events tomorrow night at the 92nd Street Y and Wednesday at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn for more behind-the-scenes peeks and appearances by Mouly’s cartoonist husband, Art Spiegelman.
