A gag cartoon (also panel cartoon, single-panel cartoon, or gag panel) is most often a single- panel

cartoon A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images ...

, usually including a caption beneath the drawing. A pantomime cartoon carries no caption. In some cases, dialogue may appear in

speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...

s, following the common convention of

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

s. As the name implies—" gag" being a show business term for a comedic idea—these cartoons are most often intended to provoke laughter. Popular magazines that have featured gag cartoons include '' Punch'', '' The New Yorker'' and '' Playboy''. Some publications, such as ''

Humorama Humorama, a division of Martin Goodman (publisher), Martin Goodman's publishing firm, was a line of digest-sized magazines featuring girlie cartoons by Bill Ward (cartoonist), Bill Ward, Bill Wenzel, Dan DeCarlo, Jack Cole (artist), Jack Cole and m ...

'', have used cartoons as the main focus of the magazine, rather than articles and fiction.

Captions

Captions are usually concise, to fit on a single line. Gag cartoons of the 1930s and earlier occasionally had lengthy captions, sometimes featuring dialogue between two characters depicted in the drawing; over time, cartoon captions became shorter.

Media

In the mid-1950s, gag cartoonists found a new market with the introduction of highly popular studio cards in college bookstores. Single-panel cartoons have been published on various products, such as coffee mugs and cocktail napkins. Traditionally, newspapers and magazines printed cartoons in black and white, but this changed in the 1950s when '' Playboy'' began to feature full-page, full-color cartoons in every issue. There are numerous collections of cartoons in both paperback and hardcover, notably ''The New Yorker'' collections. From 1942 to 1971, the cartoonist-novelist Lawrence Lariar edited the annual ''Best Cartoons of the Year'' collections.

Notable gag cartoons

A well-known 1928 cartoon in '' The New Yorker'', drawn by Carl Rose and captioned by E. B. White, shows a mother trying to convince her young daughter to finish her meal. "It's broccoli, dear." " I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it", which have created an

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...

in English language. Cartoonist

Charles Addams Charles Samuel Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters, signing the cartoons as Chas Addams. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Fa ...

drew his first gag cartoon for '' The New Yorker'' in 1932, and in 1937 started inventing a set of macabre characters in 1937 which came to be known as ''The Addams Family''. This was turned into a 1960s television series which ran for two years, in an agreement in which Addams gave his characters names and more developed characteristics. Cartoonist

Ted Key Ted Key (born Theodore Keyser; August 25, 1912 – May 3, 2008)
''The New York Times'', May 8, 2008 was a ...

created a gag panel about a bossy maid named ''Hazel'' for '' The Saturday Evening Post'' in 1943. This also was made into a 1960s television series, which ran for five years.

Notable gag cartoonists

* Peter Arno * George Booth * Roz Chast * George Clark * Sam Cobean *

Sam Gross Sam Gross (born August 7, 1933) is an American cartoonist, specializing in single-panel cartoons. History Born in Bronx, New York City, Gross was the son of Max and Sophie, who were Jewish immigrants to America. His mother was born in Iași, ...

Ted Key Ted Key (born Theodore Keyser; August 25, 1912 – May 3, 2008)
''The New York Times'', May 8, 2008 was a ...

* Gary Larson * R. K. Laxman * George Lichty *

Lorin Morgan-Richards Lorin Morgan-Richards (born February 16, 1975) is an American author, illustrator, and songwriter, primarily known for his young adult fiction and Weird West series ''The Goodbye Family''. In the past, Richards served as the publisher of ''Celt ...

* Virgil Partch (a.k.a. VIP) *

George Price George Price may refer to: * George Price (footballer) (c. 1878–1938), footballer * George Price (cartoonist) (1901–1995), American cartoonist * George Cadle Price (1919–2011), prime minister of Belize * George E. Price (1848–1938), member ...

* Ronald Searle *

Jean-Jacques Sempé Jean-Jacques Sempé, usually known as Sempé (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2022), was a French cartoonist. He is known for the series of children's books he created with René Goscinny, ''Le Petit Nicolas'', and also for his poster-like illust ...

* James Thurber *

Marvin Townsend Marvin Townsend (July 2, 1915 - November 26, 1999) was an American cartoonist known for his gag comics featured in various publications including ''Treasure Chest Fun and Fact'', ''Cartoon Spice'', and pulp magazines such as ''Amazing Stories' ...

Kim Warp Kim Warp is an American cartoonist whose work has appeared in ''Barron's Magazine'', ''Harvard Business Review'', ''The New Yorker'', ''Reader's Digest'', ''USA Weekend'', and elsewhere. She has contributed cartoons to the New Yorker for over 15 ye ...

* Gluyas Williams * Gahan Wilson

Popular setups

There are some well-established setups used regularly in gag cartoons. *

Desert island joke Desert island jokes are jokes about a person or group of people stranded on a desert island. This setting is typically used to play on stereotypes of the people present. This may refer to their profession, religion or nationality, or the people ...

s: marooned on a desert island. In earlier cartoons the island was quite large, with a shipwreck shown, to deliver the setup of the narrative. Eventually the setup has shrunk to an iconic image of a sand heap with a palm in the middle."A Guy, a Palm Tree, and a Desert Island: The Cartoon Genre That Just Won’t Die"
'' Vanity Fair'' (retrieved January 8, 2018) * Talking animals

References