Meet the Reader's Digest Cartoonists

In the pecking order of cartoon markets, READER'S DIGEST is considered one of the best: best paying, widest circulating -- and, as if you didn't all ready know, terribly competitive. RD's cartoon editor sifts thru a lot of cartoons before the final few are chosen. I submitted for years before my first sale.



Above: the READER'S DIGEST cartoonists' bios page. It starts with "A," so the opening cartoonist of the RD roster of cartoonists is my pal, good ol' inky Mark Anderson.

The DIGEST saves me for the bottom of page 2 of its 3 pages of cartoonists. And there's even a plug for this here blog. Too bad I moved and made from NYC to NH in the past 2 weeks. I better ask to be properly edited.

The nice thing about this site, which RD chose to put up recently, is that we all get to see what we look like and find out a little bit more about each other. I've met and talked with more than half of the 26 cartoonists listed, and consider a good number to be friends. Yeah, even though we're all competitors, we're all friendly.

This is also a vindication that the cartoonists are a unique part of the magazine and will continue to be.

Postscript: It's been rotten to see GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine go from buying its own cartoons to pulling old NEW YORKER magazine cartoons and slapping them on its pages. At least, that's been the practice in the past couple of issues I've seen. GH has been running its own cartoons for over 50 years, and to lose its unique imprint by running another magazine's warmed over work demeans that tradition.

And why is Hearst (GH) buying from its competitor Conde Nast (NYer) anyway?