Magazine Gag Cartoons Online UPDATED

Or, if you prefer, Magazine Gag Cartoons Without Papercuts.

I'm asked if you can see magazine cartoons online. What with the price of gas, this is a good, frugal question! I think pretty much everyone knows that there are New Yorker cartoons online, but what about the other major markets?

Here is a list, in no particular order, of magazines and where on line you can see the magazine cartoons (if the have them online, that is). I would alphabetize this list for you, but I am lazy. Please forgive! And if anyone has corrections, please let me know!

• First for Women This grocery checkout line mag which runs anywhere from one to maybe four cartoons, is published every three weeks. The cartoons are not online. They run cartoons about overworked moms, crazy things kids say, clueless dads, and some low-lying puns.

• Women's World Ditto.

• Good Housekeeping is getting out of the gag cartoon business, despite what they say. No longer publishing original submissions, the Hearst-owned monthly runs four New Yorker cartoons per issue. But there are no cartoons in the May issue. I was told last year that they are still in the gag cartoon buying business, but I still don't get my SASEs returned.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Why oh why is Hearst buying content from Conde Nast (New Yorker's parent co.), one of its big competitors?

• The New Yorker You can click and see the slideshow for the current issue, as well as their caption contest cartoon. New Yorker buys all rights.
  
  
• Playboy has no online cartoon content for the gen pop. Their content might surprise: it's a great mix of some racy, sexy cartoons, as well as some really funny general cartoons. Playboy buys all rights.
  
  
• Prospect (UK) Prospect is a monthly magazine of ideas. In March, they began showing their single panel gag cartoons online, beginning with their April issue. This month, the cartoons are missing not only for the current May issue, but they were also scrubbed from the April Web page.
  UPDATE APRIL 26, 2008: I was promised by the editor that the cartoon will appear and -- BEHOLD -- they have, at least in part. The cartoons are up for the current May issue, but the April cartoons are still AWOL. They are still having trouble converting the JPEG color palate to that limited GIF colors, making the cartoons look grainy, washed out and off-hue.
  
  
• The Oldie (UK) from their Web site:

"What is THE OLDIE?

"RICHARD INGRAMS WRITES: 'After editing Private Eye for over twenty years, I decided in 1992, along with a group of friends (Auberon Waugh, Alexander Chancellor and Stephen Glover), to launch The Oldie. The aim was to produce an antidote to youth culture but, more importantly, a magazine wih emphasis on good writing, humour and quality illustration. Sixteen years later, The Oldie can well claim to be a success story, attracting some of our best writers, illustrators and cartoonists.'"

I've sold a few to The Oldie, but they are hard market to crack -- as is the Spectator (UK).

• Wall Street Journal Above is a free link to its editorial page with its long-running five-day-a-week Pepper ... and Salt gag panel.
  
  
• Barron's No cartoons online for this premier business weekly. This is too bad because they have some terrific ones!
  

• Harvard Business Review Above is a link to the current issue. You can navigate by going here and toggling the drop down menu on the right, that will take you as far back as July 1995.
  
  
• Punch This is a link to the Punch Magazine cartoon library. Punch folded in 2002, and its obviously not a market today, but there is an extensive digital library of images from its history, which began in 1841.
  
  
• Reader's Digest RD doesn't have a place to read the current cartoons per se, but there is a newsletter site where you can browse through some of their recently published (the last 5- 6 years) cartoons.
  
  
• Saturday Evening Post is aimed at an older readership, and publishes a good number of cartoons in every issue. The mag has a "Cartoon of the Day" at the page and I don't see a backlog available. Please tell me if I'm wrong since they would have one of the world's largest backlogs! SEP runs a lot of family-friendly cartoons, with emphasis on kids and moms, and they like fishing gags a lot too. Warning: SEP pays on publication.
  
  
• Spectator (UK) This UK weekly runs up to a dozen cartoons a week. The interface for viewing the cartoons is not the best, and sometimes the reproduction is unnecessarily dinky. Quirky editorial comments appear in call out boxes as you hover your arrow over the thumbnails, too.

Of course, a number of magazines have gotten out of the magazine cartoon business: Better Homes & Gardens, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, etc. I'm not showcasing some specialized markets like The Chronicle of Higher Education or Hustler. Some markets, like Medical Economics, I just don't know much about and haven't ever seen the actual magazine.

Again, if you have some corrections, if you see omissions -- please let me know.

A tip of the hat to Pletch for letting me know about Prospect's site in the first place. He heard it from Dave Carpenter, who told me about the WSJ link.