Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons of 2017

What makes a cartoon good is a highly mysterious alchemy of image and (often) word, for which there is no working recipe. Like a good bagel, you know it when you’ve got it, and you aspire to accept no substitutes (unless you’re desperate and in an airport). While we all know it’s the copepods—tiny crustaceans!—in New York water that makes local bagels so tasty, it’s much more difficult to reverse-engineer what leads a cartoon to succeed, and thoroughly puzzling to figure out what makes one succeed on the Internet. Many people, myself included, have lost precious sleep trying to get inside the mind of the Internet comedy consumer, not to mention the Internet comedy commenter, a confounding breed. But, having parsed the cartoons that got the most love on Instagram this past year, a few themes have emerged. (If you don’t follow our account, @newyorkercartoons, get yourself to a device and do so, stat!)

Tech seems to play well—apparently, people who know how to use Instagram like jokes about social media, dating apps, and even one 2003 gem, by Alex Gregory, about the hell that is PowerPoint. And, of course, for better or worse (WORSE, WORSE, OH GOD, WORSE), it was a big year for political jokes, so a number of Trumpian cartoons (by Jeremy Nguyen, Kim Warp, Tom Toro, Ben Schwartz, Paul Noth, and Peter Kuper) were liked on many sides. Then again, incisive observations about evergreen topics, including wine and playgrounds (both from Emily Flake), as well as the holidays (Thanksgiving: Roz Chast; Halloween: Mort Gerberg) proved to be perennial delights. And Tom Toro’s misogyny-fighting Wonder Woman may have first appeared in 2015, but she could be the mascot of 2017. So, are we any closer to cracking the code? No. But do we still get to enjoy some cartoons? Why not? I suggest a side of bagel.