Introduction by Michael Kupperman:
"I'm including the rough as well as the finish because the rough has more charm… This was originally a page I pitched to a business magazine — rhymes with diplingers — on their request. The art director seemed quite shaken by it. "This is just, I don't know, really disturbing," he informed me, his voice shaky with emotion. "We're all a little freaked out." They rejected both it and the more benign, fluffy substitute I proposed — too frightened.
"At that time The New Yorker was regularly shaking me down for comics, and I passed this along to them and, to my amazement, they accepted it for the back page. (This was 2003, before the cartoon caption contest took over). The following thirty or so revisions went smoothly, it was going in, and then — we invaded Iraq. The New Yorker featured an elegaic poem written for the occasion instead, something about how lusty Mars doth trumpet forth, etc. They quickly forgot this page, and it was never printed."
Featured books by Michael Kupperman (click covers for ordering info & previews):
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