Rejected Cartoons! Too Dumb, Too Dark, Too Naughty

Twisted, offensive, yet still funny rejects from the wastebasket of The New Yorker’s cartoon editor.

BOOK – “The Rejection Collection” is a series by Workman Press – Every year thousands of cartoons are rejected by The New Yorker magazine and are sent back to the artists only to languish in their files.

WARNING: If you are easily offended, please do not read on. Use Caution viewing these cartoons in your workplace or in family situations.

These cartoons were rejected for a reason – they are too naughty, too uncomfortable, too weird, too offensive or too dark (sometimes too obscure) for the magazine to publish. 

The single-panel cartoons peppering the pages of The New Yorker are renowned for timely wit and laugh-out-loud captions. And while creating a winning cartoon is notoriously difficult—just ask anyone who has brainstormed for the magazine’s weekly caption-writing contest—most contributing cartoonists have developed a good feel for what New Yorker cartoon editors were after. Even so, they often miss the mark. Each week about fifty New Yorker cartoonists submit ten ideas, yielding five hundred cartoons for no more than twenty spots in the magazine. The cartoons that never see the light of day are tossed out for being, too low-brow, too politically incorrect, too dark, too weird, too political, too difficult to get, too dumb, too bad, or too dirty! These rejects piled up in the dusty corners of artist’s studios all over the country. Enter editor/cartoonist Matthew Diffee. He tapped his fellow cartoonists, asking them to rescue these lost gems. From the artists’ stacks of all-time favorite rejects, Diffee handpicked the standouts — the cream of the crap — and created The Rejection Collection, a place where good ideas go when they die. They have never been seen in print until this book. Sound judgment, respectability, and scruples will not be found anywhere in this book. The Rejection Collection appeals to fans of The New Yorker …and to anyone with a slightly sick sense of humor.

Information about how to buy these books is at the end of this article.

Without further ado, meet a selection of rejected cartoons, the daily hell a cartoon editor must go through.