25 Bad Ideas

I come up with a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t great. Many aren’t even good. But if there is at least some slight possibility that they might be decent, I write them down. After some time passes and I have accumulated a significant list of ideas, I read through them with fresh eyes and the worst ones I kick out and put in a document I call “Didn’t Make the Cut.“ The ones that do make the cut, I move over to a different list that I call “New Yorker Ideas to Draw.“ They often sit on that list for at least a few weeks before I get around to drawing them, so once again I go through a culling process where, upon reading them with fresh eyes, I again kick out about half of them and put them on that “didn’t make the cut” list.

So all those terrible ideas are just accumulating, collecting dust. I figure, maybe someday if I’m desperate enough, I could look back through them and perhaps something will jump out at me or I will see something in a new way that will revive the idea.

I thought it might be fun to share some of these bad ideas with you guys. These are 25 of them from 2023. Here in 2025 I still feel like a beginner at this gag cartooning thing, but back then I was really new, and I find a number of these incredibly embarrassing. Enjoy!

I’m curious. Which do you think are the worst?