My favorite Tom Gauld cartoon as well as one of his most iconic and representative (of his style of humor and recurring subject of literature), so much so that the punchline was the title of one of his books in 2013 (fair use)

(16) TOM GAULD (2001 – PRESENT)

And now we move to my wild-tier, essentially those I know as webcomic strips – although with respect to Tom Gauld I refer loosely to webcomics as seeing his cartoons through social media, as he is a published cartoonist.

Indeed, he’s a prolific published cartoonist, with his work regularly published in The Guardian, The New Yorker, and New Scientist (as per the brief bio or “about” section on his website) – not to mention books or collections close to every year since 2001.

His style reflects his self-professed fondness of “deadpan comedy, flat dialogue, things happening offstage and impressive characters” (as stated in his Wikipedia article, in turn quoting an interview with him in 2012 by Hayley Campbell for the Comics Journal).

The New Yorker is perhaps the archetypal publication for his cartoons, given its history and reputation for erudite cartoons going back at least to James Thurber. I can’t help but feel something of the spirit of James Thurber in the work of Tom Gauld – although whereas Thurber was more slice-of-life situational absurdist comedy, Gauld has more of a literary and scientific referential bent.