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
cartoon needs amount
Each cartoon needs the right amount of wrong.
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.
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.
people
I don't think most people know what's going to be in their obituary, but I do.
comic
One of the first comic things you do is imitate.
short-life fruit-flies cartoon
Cartoons are like fruit flies. Biologists use fruit flies because their large chromosomes and short life cycle make them ideal for studying hereditary changes.
levels fields understood
Humor levels the playing field. I understood that early on - that was something I had.
founder supplement ways
I was the founder of the 'Cartoon Bank' in the '90s. I was interested in finding ways for cartoonists to supplement their incomes.
adept computers found
I'm pretty adept with computers and Photoshop for my blog, and I found my style with a conversational voice and an image-ready column.
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.
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.
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.
invent
'The New Yorker' didn't invent the magazine cartoon, but it did really establish it.
I am a 'made' cartoonist, but I was born a comic.