Robert Mankoff
Robert Mankoff
Robert "Bob" Mankoffis an American cartoonist, editor, and author. He is the current cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine. Before he succeeded Lee Lorenz as cartoon editor, Mankoff was a cartoonist for The New Yorker for twenty years...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
CountryUnited States of America
believe editor humorists internal whether
Professional humorists and cartoonists have to go through a stage in which they have to kill their own internal editor just so they can get stuff out. So whether they believe it or not, they need me on the other end to do that editing for them.
editorial humor joke mind playful question retain tapping vehicle
One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.
thinking editors ideas
People think you get one idea for a cartoon every week, and that's not the way it works. You usually get 10 or 15, and you're - certainly when I was a cartoonist, before I was a cartoon editor, you're rushing to do what is called the batch. When I was doing that, I liked to have, in general, about 10 cartoons.
editors want might
As a cartoonist I do what I find funny. As an editor I have a broader approach realizing that humor is inherently subjective and I don't want my preferences to rule out what others might like.
reality remain
but the reality is that the world is transformed by it, but we, unfortunately, remain the same.
goes grenade pick quite raft run time
I will pick a raft of cartoons. And then later, it'll come time to run this cartoon. And I'll look at it, and I won't quite get it anymore. Because sometimes the grenade goes off in the moment, and then it doesn't repeat down the line.
chris occurred
The most offensive thing that ever occurred in 'The New Yorker' would be, like, the mildest thing at a Chris Rock concert.
humor
The interesting thing about humor is that in humor, you - in logic, something is A or not A. In humor, it's both A and not A.
people
People often ask me about my upbringing, and if there was anything particular about it that made me become a cartoonist.
I am a 'made' cartoonist, but I was born a comic.
invent
'The New Yorker' didn't invent the magazine cartoon, but it did really establish it.
certain close humor perfectly private public share social whom
There's public humor, and there's private humor, and they're all appropriate in their own way, and you shouldn't - just as you wouldn't have a megaphone and say certain things that you would say around your friends - things that are perfectly all right within your close social group with whom you share a certain context.
absolute funny hardest laugh medium
I think funny is just the foundation. I don't really think, to some extent, funny is the absolute most important thing. It should also communicate some idea through the medium of cartooning. Just to be funny is... You know what, the things that you laugh hardest at aren't cartoons.
cartoons comic cycle follow form given life quickly time topic
Cartoonists create so many cartoons on any given topic that we can follow the life cycle of a comic idea and how it evolves over time more quickly than we can with a form like the novel.