A New Jersey man says the New Yorker is using an old cartoon – his.
Jon Rau, of Warren, said a cartoon he’s had up on his Web site since 2006 is the obvious inspiration for one by Harry Bliss in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker.
It’s the second such allegation against Bliss and The New Yorker in two days – but the magazine said that there’s no funny business, and that the similarities between the Rau and Bliss cartoons are coincidence.
“We check every cartoon we intend to publish against all 70,000 that have appeared in The New Yorker, but it is impossible to check against every cartoon that has appeared everywhere,” said cartoon editor Bob Mankoff.
He said the magazine gets about 500 cartoon submissions a week from its regular contributors, and invariably “two different artists will produce a very similar idea.”
But Rau, 33, an advertising exec who sketches for fun, maintains the similarities between his cartoon and Bliss’ are “just too great.”
Rau’s piece, which he had posted only on his Web site, iwillkickyourassforworldpeace.com, shows a man going up to the reception desk for “Hollywood Rehab,” where the female receptionist asks him, “And the name of your referring publicist?”
The Bliss cartoon shows a woman going up to the desk of “Hollywood Rehabilitation Clinic,” where a male receptionist asks, “Were you referred to us by your doctor or your publicist?”
Asked if Bliss had ever visited Rau’s Web site, New Yorker spokeswoman Alexa Cassanos said, “We don’t believe there’s any connection here.”
Rau said, “I understand there’s a ton of ideas out there, but there are too many similarities with this.”.
Rau said he contacted the magazine yesterday, after seeing The Post’s story on outrage from comic-book fans that Bliss had based a recent piece he did for the mag’s Cartoon Caption Contest on an old comic-book cover by Jack Kirby.
Bliss said that the piece was meant to be a tribute to Kirby, and that he thought the reference to the artist was “overt.”
His editors, who said they had been unaware it was “an homage,” changed the online attribution of the piece to read “Drawing by Harry Bliss, after Jack Kirby” following an inquiry by The Post on Thursday.