So sorry to bother you and also sorry for the delay! This is Amy — sorry, you were probably expecting someone else. I know it’s been a while since I’ve edited. Sorry, it’s just…last week was Yom Kippur, you know, the day of atonement, and my schedule was super busy with all the apologizing I had to do. I’m still catching up… Sorry. I’m so sorry.
If you are a millennial like me, or a [insert identity that resonates with you], or any person alive today, you were born apologizing. We all skulked from the womb in an apologetic crouch, cried, incomprehensibly, I’m so sorry to show up like this! Look at me, I’m completely helpless! and we’ve been seeking forgiveness ever since.
Recently, I decided that I was going to mentally edit my speaking and writing to replace “I’m sorry” with “Thank you” — this advice came from a wise friend. (Thank you for being okay with the fact that I’ve forgotten your identity, wise friend!) The practice helps me save my apologies for the things I’m really sorry about, and also for cartoons, which are a great place to exorcise one’s sincere and insincere guilt.
So, in the spirit of atonement, here are some cartoons about apologies and/or some things we want to apologize for. Thank you for your patience! Thank you for your tolerance! Thank you for letting me use this many exclamation marks! Thank you for everything.
Ellis Rosen
Apologizing is hard work. It can be a long and arduous process. For instance, yesterday I accidentally stepped on my wife’s foot. The second she said “Ouch” I knew I had to cancel the rest of my plans for the day. The apologizing process had begun.
Step 1: Take a subway to the airport. Step 2: Take a flight out to the Southwest. It can be anywhere in the Southwest. Yesterday for me it was Nevada. Step 3: Seek out LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs. Step 4: Wander out into the desert and take drugs. Things will get fuzzy from here but it's important to A) face inner demons, B) have imaginary fights with loved ones, C) fight off a gigantic beast shaped like an amalgamation of your worst fears, and finally D) experience a complete loss of subjective self-identity. Only after full ego death is achieved, can you admit to yourself that you were wrong.
I’m on my way back home now as I write this, eager to get back to my wife, look her in the eyes and say “Oh whoops, sorry, didn't see your foot there.”
Ali Solomon
Every year on Yom Kippur, I promise to become less judgy. I don’t mean to be, but when someone does something especially egregious, like standing on the left side of the subway escalator, or ordering only one appetizer “for the table to share,” I judge away.
This toon is about one of my irrational pet peeves: people trying to figure out what to do with themselves during their karaoke song break. They sway awkwardly. Or banter with the audience. Or invoke fancy choreography. The correct (and only) answer is: stand there, do nothing, and wait for “Karma Chameleon” to resume.
Sorry, not sorry.
Hilary Campbell
Raise your hand if you’ve ever actually left at the time that you told your friends you were leaving!!! Okay wow, if you’re raising your hand, you’re a liar and you should be sorry!!!!!!!
P.S. if you feel guilty you can buy a print of this cartoon.
Johnny DiNapoli
The following is an approximate breakdown of my workday: 5% writing, 5% drawing, 90% attempting to craft an email that’s simultaneously simple and charmingly brilliant. Attempting is the operative word here- I’m sure I’ll write an email like this someday.
What does this have to do with apologies? Well, I want an apology from whoever invented email. Also, from anyone who’s ever emailed me.
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Look — sometimes I’m only out to amuse myself. I decided, in 2020, to get really into the brand “Big Dogs.” I just remember being thirteen and seeing kids wearing Big Dogs shirts that were (using this term quite loosely here) parodies of things like South Park and The Sopranos. What I’m trying to say here is that I watched all of Emily in Paris and thought, what if Big Dogs made a parody shirt of our du jour cultural touchstone (french intended)? But, like, who is this for? It’s for me, exclusively for me. Yet I am explaining this whole thing to you, and now you, too, have to wonder what Big Dogs’ take on Emily in Paris would be. And for this I am very sorry.
Navied Mahdavian
Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.” Unfortunately for my dog Stanley, I tell him I prefer his earlier work every time I take him out.
Whose best work is behind him? Is it you, Stanley? Is it you?
Sorry, little guy.
Bob Mankoff
At one point in my life, I was as interested in sex as the next guy. Maybe more. That regrettably led to this New Yorker cartoon of mine that in no way represents who I am today or was yesterday or even on any other day other than the day I did this cartoon.
The macho toxic masculinity now completely repels me and makes me so angry I’d like to beat the shit out of it. But what’s done is done. All I can do now is throw myself upon the mercy of the court, just so long as it’s not this court.
(*click* the cartoons above to buy them on cartoonstock.com!)
Shelby Lorman
At one point in my life, I was as interested in sex as the next gal. I went so far as to write details about my own proclivities in a book my parents read. I am sorry for that and for hyperlinking it just before as though detail would rouse you to purchase. Also sorry to myself for monetizing very embarrassing aspects of my personal life in order to make a larger point about the strangeness of modern dating and our technological dependence but lo, it is but a drop in the pond next to the shame of enraging the ethical non-monogamists of Instagram, all of whom seemed to be looking for a cursed third: my public atonement for apparently undermining their relationship model (one I am also familiar with). Here is the cartoon that I was in trouble for.
I’m sorry ENM community, for implying you are more annoying in relationships than those in other types of relationship models, or that I was somehow exempt from this. I should have specified: everyone is annoying, especially me, and I am sorry for none of it.
These days, I’m much more self aware. I take my Big Dogs shirt and I stand humbly in front of those who have been wronged by me, asking them to digitally validate me and reassure me that my sins are forgivable. That’s called growth!
Amy Kurzweil
How dare you.
For Your Pleasure: Cartoon Extras
Have you checked out cartoonstock.com? Thanks to New Yorker cartoon editor emeritus, Bob Mankoff, this is the place to license and buy prints and merch of the best cartoons in the world, from The New Yorker, Wired, Airmail and... coming very soon... ToonStack!
Pre-order Murder Book, Hilary Campbell’s upcoming graphic memoir out November 9th!
Ali Solomon illustrated a book called I am “Why Do I Need Venmo?” Years Old by Janine Annett!
Pre-order Send Help! a desert island cartoon collection by Ellis Rosen and Jon Adams
Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Next class: September 26th.
Follow Kendra Allenby as she walks the Continental Divide Trail for 5 months! (She just finished!!!!)
Jason Chatfield has a Substack called New York Cartoons!
Be sure to check out Shelby Lorman’s newsletter, Please Clap!
The same goes for Sofia Warren’s advice newsletter, You’re Doing Great!
See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!
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I've known Kendra Allen years since she was a little kid...so proud of her work and laughing a lot at it...