People often ask cartoonists, “What comes first, the caption or the drawing?” For some cartoonists, like Matt Diffee, it’s always the drawing. For others, like Jack Ziegler, it’s the other way around. But, for one class of cartoonist wannabes—the finalists in The New Yorker’s cartoon-caption contest—the image supplied by the cartoonist always come first.
How do these finalists think up their captions? The Cartoon Department has hatched various schemes over the years to ferret out this information. The use of ferrets was itself perhaps both the most ingenious and the most misguided. The best scheme turned out not to require ingenuity but simplicity: we just asked some of them.
Our first finalist, Press Millen, of Raleigh, North Carolina, took the democratic approach to Contest No. 412:
Caption: “Well, maybe once, back in clown college.”
Millen explained:
For Jim Ranscombe, of Toronto, who entered Contest No. 421, the muse was more spontaneous:
Caption: “Coffee and doughnuts. No wonder they’re endangered.”
Ranscombe remembered:
(His caption is a finalist in the current contest. Have a look at all three, and then vote.)
But, judged by uniqueness of inspiration, one of the finalists stands out: Martin Kley, of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who entered Contest No. 391:
Caption: “Why do I wonder at times whether you are fully honest with me, Henry?”
He arrived at this caption via an unusual experience:
Oh, go ahead, Martin. And, if you do, we will not only send you a framed print of the cartoon with your caption but also one to your brother and his wife. Then you can all have a good laugh about the incident, until the naked guy shows up again.