Recaptioning New Yorker cartoons with "Christ, what an asshole!"

Charles Lavoie presents compelling evidence that practically every New Yorker cartoon can be captioned with "Christ, what an asshole!" without reducing its comedy value.

How "Christ, What an Asshole!" is the Answer to the New Yorker Magazine Caption Contest (via Making Light)

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

works for Family Circus too!

http://www.jupiterkansas.com/we-are-family-circus.jpg
snakedart

My only objection is that Gahan Wilson’s particularly macabre brand of humor needs no accentuation.
Anonymous

I suggest my favourite:

“You obviously haven’t traveled much.” works for any situation!
skubie32

mundens #4 … its not that they are calling christ a asshole ..it just sounds like they are calling him an asshole …. kinda like, christ , your a dumbass …. wich is funny .. because christ isnt the dumbass you are … does it click now …. i love the comedy of the new yorker
Felton

Much funnier to me: The Nietzsche Family Circus
grikdog

My favorite? “What have you done with Dr. Asshole?”
kip w

I thought of two more, and can still remember one:
“I was not always as you see me now.”
kip w

Dean Booth provides a valuable service by mirroring the NYCC and letting readers submit their captions. Not only do we get to see every submission (and not just the three that the New Yorker finds worthy), but one of Dean’s commenters just won the actual NYCC. If I recall correctly, they wouldn’t have entered but for the encouragement they got there.

Dean tags his caption contests, so it’s possible to go back and read the last few. I’m in there (and at the Comics Curmudgeon) as “Muffaroo.” Actually, I’m “[Old Man] Muffaroo” at the CC now, because some misguided souls there think Muffaroo is a chick’s name, sadly ignorant of the name’s honored history.
Bryson

See also: http://www.what-a-misunderstanding.com/
edgeplot

Christ, that finally makes those cartoons funny!
Anonymous

“Can I go now?” also seems to work.
madeofmeat

This also works with nearly every Garfield cartoon. Ignore all dialogue and thought bubbles. In the last frame, someone or something is saying, “Christ, what an asshole.”
- Artimus Mangilord
  
  It’s called ‘retooning’. Grab the funny pages, hit them with the pencil eraser and then rewrite the caption. Highly amusing.
  
  Re: Garfield – this is also amusing.
  
  http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
  
  “Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.”
  - surreality
    
    I’ve seen that. I can’t read those, because I don’t find them funny – they actually depress me…
mundens

Why is it funny that all these people think Christ is an asshole?
AllisonWunderland

Christ! What a bunch of assholes!
phelps

Another good punch line that works with some of the contest items is “Now where’s that Eskimo woman I gotta wrestle?” (you can google that phrase to find the original joke)
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A genuinely useful thread! Here’s the list so far:

Anon @2: “Can I go now?”
phelps @5: “Now where’s that Eskimo woman I gotta wrestle?”
Anon @6: “Marmaduke!”
Anon @11: “Save it for your blog.”
Eric Knisley @13: “Honey, you shouldn’t have.”
princeminski @14: “Death begins in the colon.”
Anon @16: “You obviously haven’t traveled much.”
grikdog @19 “What have you done with Dr. Asshole?”
cleek @21/ShimmyCat: “It’s the only way I could get my health insurance to pay for it.”
citykids @27: “My wife is a slut!”
Anonymous

A friend of mine kept submitting a simple “Marmaduke!” as the caption. Never got accepted to my knowledge, but then again I rarely look at the magazine, much less the comics.
Anonymous

New York is full of hasidic fellows
Karnuvap

Ahhh – but only in the South!
cleek

ShimmyCat’s been doing something like this for a while – with similar results. but he uses the tag “It’s the only way I could get my health insurance to pay for it”.

http://shimmykat.blogspot.com/
danno1

You could pick out cartoons from any image licensing database (not just from the New Yorker), and this same premise would apply. Sites like http://www.cartoonfile.net offer similar cartoon humor, and that same gagline would apply….so I am not convinced this concept is anything new or unusual.
Anonymous

This would be a lot funnier if it was original – but this idea sprouted among readers of The Comics Curmudgeon about two years ago. Not sure which one of those very funny people came up with it, though.
Anonymous

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with the New Yorker. Harold Ross was a racist asshole, and I feel the writing is still very snobbish and condescending, especially to Italian Americans. Some of the reporting is first rate, and I enjoy some of the fiction, but overall I feel like I’m not the person they’re writing for.
- Anonymous
  
  “the writing is still very snobbish and condescending, especially to Italian Americans”
  
  Can you give an example or two?
Anonymous

“Save it for your blog,” also works for most.
weatherman

“…without reducing its comedy value.”

Only because they had so little in the first place.
Eric Knisley

I have been working on a similar idea–taking a bunch of my cartoons and recaptioning all of them with “Honey, you shouldn’t have.” Seems to work for the New Yorker pieces too.
princeminski

Try captioning them all with “Death begins in the colon.” Then Google “Mark Newgarden.”
rpmcestmoi

Besides being anti-Italian and not being funny, and besides the fact that some of the sensitive Italians in my peripheral vision are given to reading magazines not written fr them, I love the NYer, loved it more when Mr. Shawn ran it, and wish to hell that Peter DeVries was here to vett the cartoons instead of the frigging committee currently in charge. But some of them are still pretty darned good. As to Gahan Wilson, he is the master whose cartoon of the kid sliding up the slide was the cover piece of a cartoon collection in paperback in the fifties. Sometimes I think he s cartooning from a grave next to Charles Adams’s.
userw014

Taking the claim literally, I do agree. Re-captioning these “New Yorker” cartoons doesn’t reduce their value. But that’s only because it’s so difficult to generate negative humor from such bland drawings.
Anonymous

Nope, I still don’t get them.
citykids

“My wife is a slut!” will work too (thanks Kramer)