Toonstack: Recaptioning The Magic

Attempts Were Made

Me? I always get things right on the first try. That's why they call me Ellis. “Always Get Things Right on the First Try” Rosen. No, wait.  They call me Ellis “Right on the First Try” Rosen.” No, that's not it, it’s Ellis “First Try” Rosen. Listen, it’s been a while since anyone called me that, but the point is, I don’t do things more than once. `

That's it! It was Ellis “Never Does Things More Than Once” Rosen!  It just rolls off the tongue. 

As I was saying, I don't redo anything with the one exception of all my day-to-day activities and work related stuff. For instance, I redo captions for cartoons all the time. It goes like this: I draw a picture, write a little caption under it, submit it, and don't sell it. So what do I do? I give the caption the old switcheroo. Some pictures, they don’t necessarily lend themselves to one joke, see? Some are broad enough that you can take it in a whole new direction. I got some toons with a dozen different captions. Which is why they call me Ellis “He’s Got Cartoons With a Dozen Different Captions” Rosen. 

I know I’m not alone in this little cartooning trick, so I asked my fellow stackers to share some of their own re-captioned toons. 

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Amy Kurzweil

During the pandemic, like many of you, I was doing a lot of sitting in the house with my partner, willing inspiration. Besides birthing the invention of Quarantines Games such as “What If My Hand Was My Face?” and “Being On The Floor” (more games documented here), this state of affairs also inspired a lot of drawings of me and my partner sitting in the house. I drew this cartoon in May 2020:

That toon didn’t sell, but when I upped the depression ante and tried a different cliché to lead off the existential despair, it made the cut and ran as a daily on October 20th, 2020:

Did the toon really sell because in this version I pictured Jacob (a philosopher) reading Being and Nothingness? I think the ghost of Sartre willed the cartoon into existence, if only as a reminder of my own ultimate non-existence.  (Who am I kidding… I do not understand Sartre.)

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Tom Chitty

Before I started submitting to the New Yorker I sent a batch of drawings to Matt Diffee, looking for advice. This included the cartoon below (draft sketch) with the first attempt caption.

Matt's note was that it was a fun idea, but not a good joke. So, I changed the line to the second attempt, and sent it into the magazine. This was not a good joke either, let's be honest, and it was thus rejected.

A couple of years later, in 2016, I gave it another shot and sold it (final drawing, below):

Something else I notice, now that I look back on it, is that I prefer the draft sketch to the final drawing. I forgive you if you can't tell the difference between the two.

I also have a Substack and it is here.

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Navied Mahadavian:

I like to think of myself as a champion of that most underrated and noble of creatures: the lab rat (or is it mice). Maybe it’s because, like me, they are underpaid and tiny (and look surprisingly good in a scarf. See below). They are the everyman…err…mouse. Who among us hasn’t wished to trade in their boring 9-5 to become a poet?

Or be the author of their own story?

Did I mention they look good in a scarf?

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Hilary Campbell

I have so many captions for this toon, maybe you do too??  

Here we go: 

“I said, hair.” 

“And then we get to have sex?” 

“When does it get to the recipe?” 

“How’d you get to CVS if you’re stuck up there?”

“You could just say, ‘I don’t love you’ ” 

“If I wanted to know what you ate today, I’d be your boyfriend already.” 

“All this to do and yet all you’ve marked off is ‘show list to that dude outside.’”

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Jason Katzenstein

Occasionally I have pitched cartoons in my batch that The New Yorker has accepted for the caption contest. When your cartoon becomes the caption contest, you get to watch a bunch of folks look at your image and come up with their own captions. What was humbling, for me, was watching other people be funnier than me on my own cartoon — the nerve! 

Here’s an image I made along with the caption, “Am I boring you?” 

But it was accepted sans caption, and the finalists who offered up their own takes gave me a chuckle: 

(Thank  you to Attempted Bloggery for archiving this.) 

If you feel so inclined, please take a crack at a caption of your own for this cartoon in the comments section :) 

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Ellis Rosen

This cartoon here, it’s the kind of picture that lends itself to lots of different captions. What we got is a guy at a shop, he’s buying a book. An evil book by the looks of it. The guy selling to him, no stranger to the dark arts by the look of him, is talking. Presumably he’s talking about the book. That's all the information the picture holds. The caption is there to finish the work. 

So what are the limits? The main subject is the book, so presumably the joke should be about books. That’s it. Now, I don't know how familiar you are with books, but I’m telling you, there’s a lot of material to work with. Here’s my first attempt: 

When that didn't sell I tried a couple of different angles:

Anyway, unlike most of my cartoons that undergo this process, I did manage to sell this version to Airmail:

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ToonStack NewsStack

• Amy Kurzweil’s new book, Artificial: A Love Story, is available for preorder!

• So is Navied Mahdavian’s graphic memoir, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America

• Ellis Rosen’s DINK! is a cartoon collection about Pickleball

• Check out Jason Katzenstein’s Patreon!

• Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!

• 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!