Canadian cartoonists land The New Yorker 2026 calendar cover

From The Vancouver Sun.

Vancouver cartoonists Ian Boothby and Pia Guerra have landed a rare distinction: Their work appears on the cover of The New Yorker’s 2026 calendar.

“I was about to buy the calendar online and suddenly realized our cartoon was on the cover,” said Guerra. “It had been out since June, and we had no idea.”

The cartoon shows a woman in a Roman toga and sandals sitting near a Doric column, looking at an open laptop. The caption reads: “Despite all warnings, Pandora opened the comments section.”

“We’d had a small cartoon in the calendar before, then a full month last year,” Boothby said. “I honestly didn’t expect us to be included again. 

Seeing the cover was a huge thrill — especially because it was one of our earliest cartoons.”

The duo has been contributing cartoons to the magazine since 2017, shortly after one of Guerra’s editorial cartoons for The Washington Post went viral.

“That cartoon was called Big Boy,” she said. “It was drawn out of pure frustration — I was angry at everything and just venting online. 

It showed Steve Bannon holding a tiny Donald Trump on his lap, like a child signing executive orders. It took off in a way I still don’t understand.

“It was shown on major American news networks, and we even got calls from TV stations in Japan. 

A few months later, I was working as an editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post.”

For their New Yorker work, Boothby thinks of the ideas, then Guerra puts pen to paper for her favourites.

“On Sunday nights, I usually write about 20 ideas,” Boothby said. “Then I narrow that down to maybe seven that Pia can draw, and we’ll finish four or five of them. 

When I run out of gas, I always default to snowmen, Greek gods, or superheroes — those wells never seem to dry up. 

This one definitely fell into that category. Greek gods will always give you something.”

“I start with the ones that genuinely make me laugh out loud — that’s always the test,” Guerra said. “I work through the night and usually finish around seven or eight in the morning.”

They submit about five per week to New Yorker editor Emma Allen. 

“The batch is due Tuesday at 9 a.m. our time, so I send everything off, then go to bed.” On Friday they find out if they got “the OK.”

“That’s literally the subject line of the email,” Boothby said. “It’s still a total crapshoot, which is what keeps it exciting. They always seem to pick the weird ones.”

The New Yorker has published “just over 100” of their cartoons.

“So it’s not every week,” Guerra said. She and Boothby publish ones that don’t make the cut at patreon.com/mannequinonthemoon.

Their editorial cartooning success has been a surprise for both of them. 

It’s even led to Guerra being named as a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for her Washington Post work.

“I’d spent 20 years doing comics, and this side career just appeared out of nowhere because I started drawing things to share with friends online,” Guerra said.

Boothby and Guerra have extensive credits in the world of comics. 

For more than 15 years, Boothby was the main writer for Bongo, the publisher of The Simpsons and Futurama comics. 

Boothby is also the writer/creator of the Scholastic series Sparks!, about two cats who pilot a mechanical dog suit, with illustrator Nina Matsumoto. 

Guerra was co-creator of series Y: The Last Man, which Vertigo/DC published between 2002-2008. FX adapted the post-apocalyptic title into a 10-episode TV series that aired in 2021.

“What I love about editorial cartoons is the immediacy,” Guerra said. “I draw them on an iPad in the same format people will see them. 

Three hours later, they’re online. Ten minutes after that, they might be catching fire. Comics are usually slow — books take months or years.”

Case in point: A current project for Scholastic called Frostbite. A horror graphic novel for kids about snow vampires, it’s scheduled for publication in August of next year.

Besides The New Yorker, the east Vancouver couple contributes a feature called Meanwhile … to another NYC-based legacy media institution — Mad Magazine.

“That makes us feel very old,” Boothby said. 

“If this were the 1960s, we’d be rich. Instead, it’s 2025, and we’re somehow making a living in magazines. God bless us.”