Edward Frascino, New Yorker Cartoonist for 61 Years, Dies at 95
American cartoonist and illustrator Edward Frascino, whose association with The New Yorker spanned more than six decades, died in Los Angeles on August 13, 2026. He was 95.
Frascino contributed more than 500 cartoons to The New Yorker during a 61-year run that began in 1965. His last cartoon in the print magazine appeared in January 2025. According to cartoonist and New Yorker historian Michael Maslin, Frascino had also recently sold a drawing for the magazine’s online Daily Cartoon.
That 61-year run places Frascino among a small group in the magazine’s history. Maslin noted that, of the nearly 800 cartoonists who have contributed to The New Yorker over its 101 years, only six others had reached that mark.
Frascino’s relationship with the magazine began well before his first cartoon appeared under his own name. In a 2020 interview with Maslin, he recalled that one of his sketchbooks reached New Yorker art editor James Geraghty through a friend in the late 1950s. After seeing the work, Geraghty encouraged him to try cartoons.
Frascino began submitting batches of ideas around 1958. The magazine initially bought his ideas for other artists to draw. Among those who worked from Frascino ideas were Syd Hoff, Charles Addams, George Price, Whitney Darrow, Frank Modell and Charles Saxon.
He kept submitting his own drawings. For nearly seven years, from 1958 to 1965, Frascino sold ideas to the magazine while trying to get his artwork accepted.
His first cartoon appeared in the September 4, 1965 issue of The New Yorker. The first finished drawing he sold to the magazine was published a few weeks later, on October 9.
Frascino became a regular contributor, while continuing to publish elsewhere. His cartoons appeared in Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times, Look, Esquire, Punch and The Saturday Review of Literature, among other publications.
He also had a substantial career as an illustrator. Frascino illustrated the original 1970 edition of E. B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan. The Morgan Library & Museum holds a first edition credited with “Pictures by Edward Frascino,” as well as a collection of reproductions of his illustrations for the book.
In 1983, Frascino published Avocado Is Not Your Color and Other Scenes of Married Bliss, a collection of his cartoons.
Born in the Bronx on November 15, 1930, Frascino spent decades working across magazine cartooning and illustration. In his 2020 interview with Maslin, he recalled the persistence it took to get his own drawings into The New Yorker: for years the magazine bought his ideas and assigned them to other artists. He kept submitting his own work until it was accepted in 1965.
Sources
Michael Maslin’s Ink Spill — Sunday Spill: Edward Frascino…1930–2026
https://michaelmaslin.com/sunday-spill-edward-frascino-1930-2026/
The Daily Cartoonist — Edward Frascino – RIP
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2026/08/17/edward-frascino-rip/
The Morgan Library & Museum — The Trumpet of the Swan [by] E. B. White. Pictures by Edward Frascino
https://www.themorgan.org/literary-historical/312021
