Yeah, but dropping the more explicit erotic cartoons fits in with their new publishing philosophy. But that doesn’t explain why they got rid of ALL cartoons. I would’ve expected just as many cartoons, and as many ones with racy content, just not so explicitly displayed. A lot of Playboy cartoons relied on the reader being able to figure out the implications.
In any event, none of it explains why they dropped Gahan Wilson’s cartoons.
I can’t believe they only just now stopped carrying the party “jokes”. Good grief, they were pathetic 40 years ago and got worse.
I’m a long-time subscriber and I probably won’t miss the nudes, but I will definitely miss the cartoons!
What’s also notably missing is the Playboy Forum. The Forum was one of the features that always elevated Playboy over its rival skin mags. It was a true exchange of ideas, and not just liberal vs. conservative talking points. It was smart stuff. Its departure is part of a more lightweight, short-attention-span approach that is definitely aimed at a younger audience.
I still read it cover to cover, and the content wasn’t horrible. But it’s not as filling anymore.
Maybe Gahan’s retired? The poor guy just turned 86, after all. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen his work in The New Yorker for quite a while now.
Many of the great full-page color artists have nice albums published…I have big collections by Jack Cole, Dick Sneyd, Erich Sokol, Charles Miller, and a few others. And you can buy the fiftieth anniversary Playboy cartoon collection online for a few bucks. In hardcover.
Don’t forget Kurtzman and Elder’s “Little Annie Fanny,” the first fully-painted multi-page comic. While it was rarely funny, it’s certainly amazing to look at. Dark Horse Comics published the whole run in two extensively footnoted volumes (so you don’t miss any of the thousands of pop culture references).
Ah yes. James Bomb, Daddy Bigbucks, Wanda Homefree, Macho Mitch…
I think he was just in one, which I pointed out to my wife. He must be ancient - I saw him at a Worldcon in 1972 and he wasn’t super young then.
I haven’t read Playboy in decades, but it is a shame about the cartoons. Hell, even New Yorker cartoons have nipples now. And good erotic cartoons are not as easy to get online.
I knew him in the late 1980s…I was the editor on his not-so-great novel, Everybody’s Favorite Duck. We had some nice chats about vintage cartoonists and horror illustrators. We’re both big Lee Brown Coye fans.
In today’s news – Playboy may be up for sale now:
It’s #66 on Wiki’s List of Magazines by Circulation as of 2013. And while a lot of the higher-ranking magazines are essentially junk mail (AARP The Magazine, AARP Bulletin and Costco Connection are the top three and a slew of AAA magazines are up there as well), Hefner hasn’t been able to say “We’ve fallen all the way to number one” in quite a while now.
Well, heck, that still puts it above The New Yorker (#82, with 200,000 less in circulation than Playboy), and even further ahead of **Marie Claire, Forbes, Fortune, ** and — Wired.
Of course, this is based on the old circulation figures. They’re clearly hoping it will go up.
So I got to complete my image collection of PB Centerfolds (gathered over the years from various websites that came and went). Non-nudes don’t count (although you could make a case that the late 1950s Centerfolds were really non-nudes). Anyway, kind of a bummer in an “end of an era” way.
I was more of a “Oh Wicked Wanda” fan (as much as I could be at the time, stealing looks with my friends from their father’s magazines - oh, and woods porn - don’t forget woods porn). In recent years I have seen scans of the comics on VEF, and the comparison still holds: OWW > LAF…
Thanks, I can now save some money. The cartoons were one of the best things.
Why get rid of them?
I mean, I get why get rid of full nudity- this allowed the zine to be sold more places.
But cartoons?!?:mad:
Possibly because the cartoons themselves often contained those nekkid wimmens.
They didn’t all, of course. Shel Silverstein and Jack Davis and Gahan Wilson’s cartoons rarely featured nudes. Even their “sexy” cartoonists often produced cartoons that were funny and often racy but without explicit nudity. And plenty of Playboy cartoons had nothing to do with sex at all. But, for whatever reason, they’re gone.
I notice that, just as the nipples and the pudendae and the gulteal sulci are gone from the photographs, they are also gone from the illustrations. There’s a single color cartoon rendering of a naked woman, on the advisor page, and she’s pretty much show from the side, like the women in the photos. You can show a bare bottom, provided it’s from the side, or partially covered to conceal the buttcrack.