Esoteric magazine cartoons

[dougie_monty]

In the 1925-1950 album of New Yorker cartoons, in the 1925-30 segment, there is a puzzling cartoon. The setting is outside, at an isolated roadside; there are stands like at a football stadium, or better yet, a racetrack, with people in the stands holding signs representing this state or that, suggesting a political convention.
In the foreground a silhouetted figure fires a handgun at a sign on a tree; the sign reads "CRAB APPLE." The title of the cartoon is "The Fatal Night in DeRussey's Lane."
:confused:
Is this just typical Twenties New Yorker esoterica?

[Why A Duck]

From here (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/ALLEN/ch8.html):

It was four long years since the Reverend Edward W. Hall and Mrs. Eleanor R. Mills had been found murdered near the crab-apple tree by DeRussey's Lane outside New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1922 the grand jury had found no indictment. But in 1926 a tabloid newspaper in search of more circulation dug up what purported to be important new evidence and got the case reopened. Mrs. Hall was arrested-at such an unholy hour of the night that the reporters and photographers of this tabloid got a scoop-and she and her two brothers, Henry and Willie Stevens, were brought to trial, thus providing thrills for the readers not only of the tabloid in question, but of every other newspaper in the United States.

Sounds like the OJ trial of the 20's.

[dougie_monty]

Thanks, Why-a-Duck. :) I guess this is esoterica--to people of the baby-boom generation. If I had been able to discuss this with people from my grandparents' generation, I would probably have understood the cartoonist's message. (I don't get the New Yorker.)

[lissener]

FWIW, the New Yorker's cartoons are in a lame phase right now. They've had no bite or substance since Art Spiegelman was cartoon editor.

[dougie_monty]

Is that the Art Spiegelman who draws undergound comic art?

[Krokodil]

Originally posted by dougie_monty
Is that the Art Spiegelman who draws undergound comic art?

Yes, and the same guy who wrote and drew MAUS. But wasn't it actually his wife, Francoise Mouly, who was the art/cartoon editor?

I particularly enjoyed their tenure at the magazine. On their watch, people like Jaime Hernandez, R. Crumb, Maurice Sendak and David Mazzuchelli contributed to it. This was the redeeming quality to the Tina Brown years.

[lissener]

Don't know if his wife ever edited, but at the time that I was aware of such things, Art Spiegleman himself was the actual cartoon editor.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Let's see if I have this straight.

Tina Brown made Bob Mankoff cartoon editor in September of 1997, to succeed Lee Lorenz who from 1973 until 1993 was the art editor, and thereafter the cartoon editor. Mankoff still is the cartoon editor.

Spiegelman's wife, Francoise Mouly, depending on which site you believe, is either the art editor or the arts and covers editor. Spiegelman himself is a contributing editor but never was the art, arts, or cartoon editor.

The New Yorker, of course, doesn't have anything as déclassé as a masthead, so I don't know if these positions and people are still current.