When the September 24th edition of The New Yorker ran with virtually no cartoons, the question occured to me of whether there was a precedent for this. However, the obvious possible candidate that came to mind was the issue with Hersey’s “Hiroshima” in it and I have to admit that I wasn’t sure whether they habitually carried cartoons at all in that period. (While lots of the writing from those days - Parker, Thurber, Lillian Ross etc. - is familiar, that’s now become independent of the original format.) Now, with the Roger Angell piece in the November 12th issue about WWII cartoons, it’s obvious to me that copies of the period were just as strongly visual as currently. So, two related questions:
Is there a precedent for the magazine running without the cartoons?
Was the “Hiroshima” edition an otherwise fairly normal issue? (I believe it was a specially extended issue, but that’s not that uncommon.)
AFAIK, “Hiroshima” ran as an article over two issues of the magazine, and there were still cartoons (though they probably didn’t have them on the same pages as the article). The black cover issue of the New Yorker was almost certainly the first time they didn’t run any (there was one drawing, but with no caption and the subject wasn’t humorous).
Per “Genius in Disguise,” a biography of Harold Ross, “Hiroshima” ran as a single issue published August 31, 1946. The issue was without without cartoons and without most of all of the other regular editorial features.
There’s more if anyone’s interested, but I don’t want to bore you.
Sept. 24th did run ONE cartoon, a George Booth on the Contributors page in the front of the book. No caption, and it shows his famous old lady violinist character sitting with her head lowered and fiddle on the floor next to her. Next to her is her cat, who has its paws over its head.