MY SHELL WAS RECALLED! A Cartoon Portfolio from The Wall Street Journal

Let's delve into MY SHELL WAS RECALLED! A CARTOON PORTFOLIO FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL edited by (who else?) Charles Preston. It's copyright 1973 and 1974 by the Dow Jones Company. As you can see, I bought it second hand at The Strand for $3.50.


Above: I guess by now Miss Knight is a grandmother. What has it been? A generation or more since the typewriter!?

"I don't know his exact age, but he speaks of having seen three revivals of wide neckties."

Master Gag Cartoonist Leo Garel shows us the interior of a mens club in such bold and economic lines here. Dig those cool 70s biz men in the right bottom foreground!

"Sure it's great. But have you given thought to what it will do to the environment?"

Cartoonist George Dole gives us a gag about the environment. Note his quick linework and expressive eyes.

"Our chances are looking better"

I don't know the cartoonist who drew this, but he knew what he was doing; using the black spotting to draw our eyes to the defendant and the judge so as to complete the gag.

"I feel like an absolute fool holding this plastic umbrella."

Big, clear plastic umbrellas were a rage in the 70s,as Bill Levine posits above. Like CB radios, this one rage, fortunately, passed.

"-- and I say it's Little Miss Muffet, not Little Ms. Muffet."

The thing I liked about this was the frown on the kid's face. She will not grow up to be a "Miss."

"Remember when the teenage drug problem was what to use on pimples?"

OK, an old joke. But I like how this seems like a cartoon I could see today, 35 years alter, in some middle-of-the-road women's magazine. Bruce Cochran (Cochran!) hides his signature behind the chair leg. I think that Cochran! and Scott Shaw! are the only cartoonists who sign their names with an exclamation mark.



$10,000 ain't what it used to be. Nice drawing of a circa 1970s living room, but no signature!

"Why can't we live beyond our means, I'd like to know? What's wrong with the American way of life?"

Aptly put, by Leo Garel in the above cartoon. Unfortunately, it's the same or worse today.

Cochran! gives us a pollution-oriented cartoon. Dig the groovy decor! Remember when people would smoke inside?



Above: Serrano didn't know that nowadays our kids would be the target of Big Pharma for all that and more. Like fine wine, this cartoon is even better today.

"You missed a fabulous party, Emily -- no one mentioned Watergate or the energy crisis!"

"It's hard to believe we once stood in line to see this movie!"

And pretty soon, it'll be, "I can't believe we used to wait three days for our DVD rentals to arrive in the mail." I love the milieu in a Reamer Keller drawing.

" ... And do you, John, further promise to love, honor and cherish this woman regardless of any view she may have on women's liberation?"

Ed Arno (no relation to Peter) gives us swift lines, almost a casual sketchiness, to the above scene. Does it look like the people on the right are inexplicably wiped out? That's the way the drawing appears.