More Than 200 Readers Answer a Call for Cartoons in P.C. Vey's Spirit

More than 200 readers submitted single-panel cartoons in the spirit of P.C. Vey, the longtime New Yorker cartoonist who died recently, in response to an open call from The New York Times.

The submissions found humor in everyday absurdities: the waistband that splits, the machine that refuses to cooperate, the routine conversation that turns unexpectedly. "In the moment, it's rarely funny," the Times noted — but distance converts small indignities into amusement.

The cartoons clustered around three themes the newspaper used to organize its selection:

• Just Another Day in the Absurd — the world doesn't make sense, and neither do we.
• Humans Versus the Modern World — technology promised ease, yet daily life doesn't feel easier.
• The Road to Somewhere — self-improvement efforts toward being more accomplished, organized, enlightened or stylish hit "a few potholes."

What did the cartoonists actually deliver?

By the editors' own account, many submissions were clever and visually striking, and "plenty made us laugh out loud." That is a subjective judgment, of course; no prizes were awarded and no single winner was named. The published piece presents a selection rather than a definitive ranking.

The Times also put the cartoons before someone with standing to judge: Vey's widow, Tina. Asked what she thought, she singled out two — one about the perils of saving for retirement, another about the simple pleasure of avoiding people.

"They had the essence of Peter," she said by phone.

Why this tribute took a drawn form

P.C. Vey built a career at The New Yorker on single-panel observations of human weakness and modern friction. A reader-drawn tribute mirrors that format rather than eulogizing it in prose. The themes the submissions gravitated toward — futile self-improvement, uneasy relations with technology, the absurdity of ordinary routine — map closely onto the territory Vey worked for years.

The project sits with Amisha Padnani, an obituaries editor at the Times and creator of Overlooked, the series that tells the stories of remarkable people whose deaths were not originally reported by the paper. Her involvement signals where the initiative lives editorially: at the intersection of obituary coverage and reader participation.

What does this change for the tradition Vey belonged to? Nothing structural — the magazine cartoon remains an endangered form in a shrinking print market. But 200-plus submissions from unpaid readers suggest the appetite for drawn, single-panel humor outlives any one cartoonist. That, more than any single drawing, is the substance of the tribute.