Seth Pays Tribute To Rea Irvin Of ‘The New Yorker’
by Richard Bruton
The New Yorker celebrates its centenary as Seth pays tribute to Rea Irvin, the man who invented its famous mascot.
The esteemed New Yorker magazine celebrates 100 years of publication in 2025 with year of special events, including four special issues, new fiction and poetry anthologies, the complete digitization of the New Yorker archive, an exhibition at the New York Public Library, and a Netflix documentary.
The first of the special centenary issues will be the double-sized Anniversary Issue, the magazine’s 5,057th, dated February 17th & 24th, 2025. Inside that issue, you’ll find cartoonist and graphic novelist Seth paying fitting comic tribute to Rea Irvin and his famous creation, Eustace Tilley, who graced the very first cover, in 1925.
He was both artist and effectively the magazine’s first art editor, responsible, as Seth tells us, for much of the look and feel of something that would become an American literary institution.
Seth’s perfect appreciation of a sadly underappreciated cartoonist and designer is just everything you would want and expect it to be. Quite the most lovely and loving tribute.
You can find the article at The New Yorker here — partially paywalled but still viewable.
