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
people
People often ask me about my upbringing, and if there was anything particular about it that made me become a cartoonist.
people
I don't think most people know what's going to be in their obituary, but I do.
bad humor line people taste truth
The line between humor and bad taste is your audience, in which some people will find everything offensive, and some people will find nothing offensive, but the truth is that most humor originates in what would be called bad taste.
absurd funny people situations
people are funny because they're absurd in situations where they don't know they're absurd.
sex people ironic
None of the cartoons that I ever did are basically, if they're about sex, they're about sex in sort of this, you know, this ironic way, or the way that people actually treat it.
laughter people groups
Humor of all types is notoriously subjective. That's true not only between different people but even within an individual at different times. This subjectivity is often masked when your in a group because laughter is contagious.
people cartoon looks
When you look back at the older cartoons, they're very much more observational cartoons. And the cartoon - the people in the cartoons are not making the joke.
people lines generations
The generations that were exposed to sitcom have the people actually saying the line, saying the joke, whereas sort of before that, you have much more observational humor.
reality remain
but the reality is that the world is transformed by it, but we, unfortunately, remain the same.
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.
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.
I am a 'made' cartoonist, but I was born a comic.