THE ANATOMY OF A NEW YORKER CARTOON

MAKE IT PERSONAL

I was working as a graphic designer, scrolling through Instagram, when I came across @newyorkercartoons. I was like, all of these cartoons are white. There’s no other kind of perspective and if there is a Black character, or person of colour, they’re very background. Atmospheric almost. That kind of stuff can skate by because [the] people making those decisions don’t really notice. I thought maybe they just need someone to tell them. Me being a naïve 22-year-old clicked the email button on Instagram and said, “Hey guys! You should get some more Black cartoonists.” The cartoon editor emailed me back within a day and was like “This is something that’s been on my radar – we’re working on it, do you have anyone that you’d recommend?” And I was like, “Yeah, I recommend me.”

BE RESPONSIVE

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A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons) on Jun 8, 2020 at 8:20am PDT

I’m inspired by reading the news, and conversations [I have]. I normally think of the caption first, or something I’m feeling. Often for The New Yorker, something will happen [and] I will respond to it. I remember the day everything was getting crazy after the murder of George Floyd and the murder of Breonna Taylor I got like 50 text messages from friends saying, “Are you OK?” “How are you taking this?” I was just shocked because it wasn’t new.

I think in my lifetime Trayvon Martin [an unarmed 17 year old African-American high school student fatally shot, walking home from a convenience store] had been a huge thing in 2012. So, the night and day of responses was shocking to me. Like, are people for real right now? People didn’t know? I thought it was more sad than anything. And I tried to be really brutally honest. I know some of my friends were super offended by the cartoon [captioned: “Just ignore it - my white friends keep checking in on me because they think racism is new”]. I have two older sisters and a friend who had texted her asking if she was OK, messaged her saying “I saw your sister's New Yorker cartoon, was that about me? I’m so sorry!” [laughs]. I guess that everyone is trying to do something but that was just this crazy moment where Black people somehow became responsible for carrying all this guilt and regret. I just thought: “Oh My God, please make it stop.”

GIVE YOURSELF SUPERPOWERS

I have really big, natural, curly hair and people just touch it all the time. Then layer on top of that the history of slavery, how Black bodies were commodified and sold, that the previous hundred years we didn’t own our own bodies and this feeling [now] that white people can just touch it whenever. It’s a really layered thing and it kept happening to me [people touching my hair] and I thought, enough. What if my hair could fight back?

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…

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A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons) on Mar 7, 2019 at 2:14pm PST

At The New Yorker they don’t give any parameters at all, they just say these are the deadlines. You can submit something, maybe we will except it. I drew like 50 before I got one yes, and then I became a regular contributor. Rejection forces you to keep doing it, and you just get better and better at it. For drafts, I normally do it on a Post-It-note, in pencil. Or I’ll think of the text and think of how the text can fit into a scene. I use my iPad to draw things further.

I drew my first cartoon at 19 years old. It was me talking to my childhood dog, I said something like, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.” Something about sitting there, making sense of my feelings, putting it on paper and having to fully sit in it in the amount of time it takes me to draw it - usually the first sketch is around 30 minutes...it made me feel better. It’s about letting the worst and the best parts of yourself talk to each other - that’s how I conceptualise it. What are the parts of myself that I don’t want anyone to know ever exists? That I want to hide away? What are the best parts that I aspire to be and how can I have them interact? And let it all out on the page, in a non-judgemental way. 

FEEL THE FEAR, DRAW IT ANYWAY

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A post shared by Liz Montague (@lizatlarge) on Jul 13, 2020 at 9:08am PDT

My advice to aspiring cartoonists? Make honest work and don't be afraid to put it out there. That’s the hardest part, honestly. I try to be really conscious of when I’m filtering myself and why, a lot of it is social norm bullshit. Especially the way women have been so silenced in the past and the present. I think to myself: I’m going to show up here as my full self. My constant monologue is I’m not going to dehumanise myself. And I’m just going to have to stand in that.

You can follow Liz on Instagram @lizatlarge