The Smythes

Written & drawn in the 1930s by the first art editor of The New Yorker, these colorful, stylishly eccentric, and gently satiric cartoons about a middle-class family striving for status during the Great Depression are reminiscent of the writings of P. G. Wodehouse and John Cheever.

Rea Irvin was The New Yorker’s first art editor and creator of the magazine’s iconic mascot, the butterfly enthusiast Eustace Tilly. In 1930, he ventured into new territory with the comic strip The Smythes. The Smythes—comprised of John, Margie, and their two forgettable children, Willie and Maudie—are a niceish suburban family, restless in their social stature, and eager to climb a sometimes wobbly social ladder (a ladder made even wobblier by the Great Depression). Irvin’s distinct, graceful line renders the Smythes in all their glory and hilarity as they navigate ill-fated dinner parties with pompous socialites, fend off robbers dressed as Santa, and get chased out of restaurants by cleaver-wielding chefs. 

With flavors of the upper-crust humor of Wodehouse and the suburban surrealism of Cheever, The Smythes drolly captures the joys, heartbreaks, and humiliations of being in a family. Handpicked by acclaimed cartoonists R. Kikuo Johnson and Dash Shaw—who also penned the introduction together—this new selection of Smythes strips also includes an afterword by comics historian Caitlin McGurk that sheds new light on Irvin’s work and life. An unsung masterpiece of cartooning, The Smythes is finally available to a new generation of readers ready to marvel at the full reach of Irvin’s artistic abilities.