The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap

The Rejection Collection #2

by Matthew Diffee

Each week "The New Yorker" receives more than five hundred submissions from its regular cartoonists, who are all vying for one of the twenty coveted spots in the magazine. So what happens to the 75 percent of cartoons that don't make the cut? Some go back in a drawer, others go up on the refrigerator or into the filing cabinet...but the very best of all the rejects can be found right here in these pages.

"The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap" is the ultimate scrap heap of creative misfires -- from the lowbrow and the dirty to the politically incorrect and the weird, these rejects represent the best of the worst...in the best possible sense of the word. Handpicked by editor Matthew Diffee, these hilarious cartoons are accompanied by handwritten questionnaires and photographed self-portraits, providing a rare glimpse into the minds of the artists behind the rejection.

With appendices that explore the top ten reasons why cartoons are rejected and examine the solitary nature of the job of cartooning -- plus a special bonus section of questions asked of and answered by cartoon editor Robert Mankoff -- this sequel to "The Rejection Collection" offers even deeper insight into the exercise in frustration, patience, and amusement that is being a "New Yorker" cartoonist.

Warped, wicked, and wildly funny, "The Rejection Collection Vol. 2 "will appeal to every "New Yorker" fan -- and everyone with a taste for the absurd.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Comics, Cartoon, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Art

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Matthew Diffee has been contributing cartoons to The New Yorker since 1999. His work has also appeared in Time, The Huffington Post, The Believer and Texas Monthly magazines. He is the editor of three volumes of “The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw and Never Will See in The New Yorker” published by Simon & Schuster and is working on a new book for Scribner called “Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People.” He’s done illustration work for bands like the Punch Brothers and for a special collector’s edition of Stephen King’s novel “Under the Dome.” Last year Diffee received the Silver Reuben Award for best single panel cartoonist of the year and was recently named Chairman of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society.

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

--- The Lone Ranger and Tonto share a very "Brokeback" moment.

--- A woman proudly sports a bumper sticker that reads "My son is hung like a donkey."

--- As two young girls play in the sandbox, one asks the other, "Wanna see me fake an orgasm?"



Yeah...I see why these didn't make the magazine.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cartoons are totally inappropriate, raunchy, and mostly very funny. However, the best part of the book are the questionnaires completes by the cartoonists. Definitely a perfect bathroom read.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the cartoons were super funny.

[chrstphre campbell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drawings & photographs are remarkably poor quality ( ! )

360 is page perfect ( ? )
200 is acceptable for most everything,
100 & below looks granulated,
I think this book used 40 dpi or worse ( ! )
Many of The cartoons were incomprehensible, even when enlarged ( ! )
( ? )
: - - - - - : o
Very weird?

[Montanasmith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cartoons were okay - best part of the book was the questionnaire each cartoonist filled out - some of those were hilarious

[Steve Horn · Rating 4 out of 5]

“so good”

[Andres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like the first collection, this is a raucous look at the crude, vulgar, tasteless but funny cartoons that were rejected by the New Yorker magazine.

Again each of the artists humorously fills out a questionnaire and contributes 3 - 5 cartoons.

Like the previous collection, the lack of diversity caught my attention. Of the 38 artists only 5 are women and none are a person of color. Again, this might only represent those who were willing to contribute to the collection but it makes me wonder who makes up the vast majority of cartoon contributors (not only who submits but who gets published). The two collections were published in 2006 and 2007, not that long ago, but with the recent attention about lack of representation this is an interesting thing to bump into since it's "just" a bunch of cartoons. I wouldn't have thought about it at all except, like the first book, there's a photo of each cartoonist in the book. Page after page... it was quite noticeable.

Funny collection, worth at least one read-through (just like its predecessor).

[Joey Alison Sayers · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this collection, I started to wonder if I had been magically transported to a Rush concert. So many older white dudes! Thirty-nine contributors (including the editor) and five of them are women. Five. Here's a graph of that:
Dudes: % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % %
Ladies: # # # # #

And boy oh boy is it white. Again, 39 contributors. How many are white? 38. I'm not even going to do a graph for that one.

Is the world of comics artists that homogeneous? Not remotely, in my experience.

I don't know if this demographic breakdown extends to the magazine at large, but I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe I'll do a follow up report. But, I know the city of New York doesn't look like that.

As for the cartoons themselves: meh.

[Lee Battersby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still funny, but a slightly weaker collection than the first. There's a reliance on sex and toilet humour here that wasn't quite so prevalent in the first collection, and on the whole it comes across as slightly less clever than its predecessor. The questionnaire forms that were a feature of the first book are repeated here, but feel forced and arbitrary, and don't actually reveal anything real about the cartoonists involved, which we did see in Volume One.

Overall, it's still a funny book-- these are good cartoons by talented and intelligent cartoonists. It just doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series. As a long time, avid New Yorker fan (renewed subscription for over 10 years), I recognized a lot of these cartoonists' work. But it wasn't the rejected cartoons that made this volume so fascinating, it was the little bits of the cartoonists' lives that were revealed in the self-bios and pics. You'd be surprised at how much personality is revealed in someone's fridge! After reading this series, I've now added "go on a date with a New Yorker cartoonist" to my bucket list. Any one know if Harry Bliss is single? I love Penny!

[Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

- "Each week The New Yorker receives more than five hundred submissions from its regular cartoonists, who are all vying for one of the twenty coveted spots in the magazines..."
- "...from the lowbrow and the dirty, to the politically-incorrect and weird, these rejects represent the best of the worst."
- "With appendices that explore the top ten reasons why cartoons are rejected and examine the solitary nature of the job of cartooning..."
- I loved it as much as Volume #1

[Mum · Rating 4 out of 5]

okay, I usually don't count cartoon books in my reading, but these two volumes had sufficient text in the questionnaires filled out by the cartoonists. A voyeristic look into the minds of cartoonists AUGHHH PUT IT BACK ON!!! An escape from reality and then the realization that one could/could not do better!

[Todd N · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rejected cartoons from The New Yorker. Not as funny as Vol. 1, but still funny.

My favorite cartoon out of this batch shows a street hot dog cart with a business man's head sticking out of it. The sign on the side says "Hot Dog Baths $1.00 End Of Day Special!" I don't know why this made me laugh so hard, but it did.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

As funny as the first volume, but it gets one more star for more cartoons, funnier cartoonist profiles, and a hilarious appendix presenting examples of the top ten reasons cartoons get rejected by The New Yorker. It occurs to me that many of the New Yorker rejects would find a perfectly respectable home in Playboy.

[Elaine Meszaros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billed as "More cartoons you've never seen, and never will see, in The New Yorker " this delightfully vulgar and amusingly awful collection is sure to get laughs out of the crankiest curmudgeon. Interspersed with the various familiar New Yorker -style cartoons are short bio sheets filled out by by the cartoonists. So many wrong, wrong, wrong cartoon. Just try and avert your eyes!

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely hilarious collection of cartoons that were deemed unsuitable for The New Yorker. Too racy, too politically incorrect, just too wrong. But oh so funny. This will be a great book to revisit whenever I need a good laugh.

[Lew Pepper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A holiday gift that I keep close by for those moments when I need a joke because what I'm reading is way too bleak. I don't believe that I could ever say that I've finished this since I keep going back to the same cartoons when I need a lift.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Yorker cartoons that are actually funny. This is probably because they are a bit more crude and easier to get. Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to like most the ones that actually make it into the Magazine.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 2 follows the same structure as Volume 1, but the new questionnaire form makes them dense and tedious so I skipped most of them. I didn't think the cartoons were as funny either, and quite a few I just didn't get. Still, an adequate coffee table or bathroom book.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book and its predecessor make me wish I'd stuck with cartooning... Sadly, I think the best of the rejected cartoons are far better than the ones actually accepted by The New Yorker.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit uneven, but many highly amusing moments.

[Malbadeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

funny enough to make me an obnoxious coffee partner, not so funny that I couldn't get through several pages in a row without laughing.

[Laure "Voop" · Rating 3 out of 5]

The jokes were not nearly as funny as those in volume one.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you like to roll on the bed and laugh? I do. And I did with TRCV2:TCC.

[Mike Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad New Yorker Cartoons, but cartoons that did not make it to the New Yorker for one reason or another (he talks about it). Roz Chast and others. Good read.

[Rozanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best title ever. Super hilarious to the nth degree.

[Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

More hilarious cartoons that weren't quite right for the New Yorker, plus clever and interesting background info on the cartoonists (such as photos of what's inside their respective fridges).

[Phayvanh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great gifty-book for anyone into New Yorker comics, this collection of their rejects (from their regular contributors) is dark, sexy and weird. And Fun.

[Koeeoaddi · Rating 4 out of 5]

My God, this is funny. New Yorker cartoons -- on crack.

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought there'd be more new cartoonists, and/or more cartoons, but this was still entertaining to have nearby when I was sick.