An Ellis Rosen pun cartoon (which came by me on Facebook this morning) in which ER manages to treat Manhattan, the name of the island that’s one of the boroughs of New York City, as a pun on Manhattan, the name of the cocktail (made with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters). This is a signal achievement in joke puns, managed by exploiting Godzilla / Gojira, from the Japanese movies, a radioactive prehistoric reptilian monster with a ravenous appetite for urban infrastructure, especially city buildings and large vehicles:
The cartoon, situated in a world of reptilian monsters (a world that’s a translation from our everyday world of restaurant dining); as a bonus, in an inset, the cartoonist’s thumbnail sketch of himself
On his Instagram page, ER says he’s re-posted this old cartoon of his because of the new Godzilla movie.
The new Godzilla movie. From Wikipedia:
Godzilla Minus One (Gojira Mainasu Wan) is a 2023 Japanese kaiju film directed, written, and with visual effects by Takashi Yamazaki. Produced by Toho Studios and Robot Communications and distributed by Toho, it is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise
The cartoonist. From his website:
Ellis Rosen is a cartoonist, writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn, NY. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, as well as The New York Times, MAD Magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, The Paris Review, Late Night with Seth Meyers and Air Mail. He has also done several comics for the Daily Shouts section on TheNewYorker.com. He is the co-editor for the … cartoon anthology: Send Help! Read his weekly cartoon series, Junk Drawer, at GoComics.com.
And on that anthology, see my 11/13/21 posting “A double desert cartoon”, about Send Help! A Collection of Marooned Cartoons, edited by Jon Adams and Ellis Rosen: a compendium of Desert Island cartoons.