SOURCE: "The New Yorker Cartoon and Modern Graphic Humor," in Studies in American Humor, n.s. Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 1984, pp. 61-73.

Inge is an American critic and educator who has described himself as "a literary and cultural historian with strong interests in editing, bibliography, and criticism," as well as "nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture, with specific focuses on American humor, Southern ethnic writing, twentieth-century fiction, American literature abroad, popular culture, comic art, biography, and intellectual history." In the following excerpt, Inge examines the influence of New Yorker cartoons on American pictorial humor.

When Harold Ross issued his often quoted prospectus for his new magazine in 1925, he noted in the first sentence, "The New Yorker will be a reflection in the word and picture of metropolitan life." Thus the graphics were to share equal importance with the text. And if the New Yorker has, as one historian...