Author(s): Matthew Diffee

Comics & Cartoons

"The Rejection Collection" brings together some of "The New Yorker's" brightest talents - Roz Chast, Gahan Wilson, Sam Gross, Jack Zeigler, David Sipress, and more - and reveals their other side. Their dark side. Their juvenile side. Their sick side. Their naughty side. Their outrageous side. And what a treat. Ventriloquist dummy cartoons. Operating room cartoons. Bring your daughter to work day cartoons (the stripper, the prison guard on death row). Lots of couples in bed, quite a few coffins, wise-cracking animals - an obsessive's plumbing of the weird, the scary, the off-the-wall, and done so without restraint. Every week "The New Yorker" receives 500 cartoon submissions, and rejects a great majority - mostly, of course, for not being funny enough. There's no question why these were rejected, and it's not for lack of laughs. One can almost hear Eustace Tilley sniffing, We are not amused.