The final entry in The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide is a book of single-panel cartoons, conceived and written by Steve Martin, who can’t draw, and drawn by New Yorker cartoonist, Harry Bliss, who can. This is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to laugh, any fan of single-panel cartoons with offbeat humor, and anybody who likes having books about pigeons but never actually opens them so they won’t realize that this isn’t really a book about pigeons.

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection
written by Steve Martin, drawn by Harry Bliss
Celadon Books
ISBN-13 : 978-1250262899
$28.00 (discounted at Amazon)

In a recent New York Times profile, Steve Martin was described as ” an aspiring cartoonist with no artistic ability. ” Having spent many nights between 2 AM and 4 AM jotting down ideas for cartoons, Martin asked Harry Bliss, a famed New Yorker cartoonist who probably owns a mansion and a yacht if he would be interested in bringing his ideas to paper.

According to the Times, “Bliss was interested. Over the next six months, they created around 200 cartoons, many of which appear in their new collection, A Wealth of Pigeons.”

We go to the PR blurb, which is rather oddly structured…

“I’ve always looked upon cartooning as comedy’s last frontier. I have done stand-up, sketches, movies, monologues, awards show introductions, sound bites, blurbs, talk show appearances, and tweets, but the idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me. I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny. You can understand that I was deeply suspicious of these people who are actually funny.”

So writes the multitalented comedian Steve Martin in his introduction to A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection. In order to venture into this lauded territory of cartooning, he partnered with the heralded New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. Steve shared caption and cartoon ideas, Harry provided impeccable artwork, and together they created this collection of humorous cartoons and comic strips, with amusing commentary about their collaboration throughout. The result: this gorgeous, funny, singular book, perfect to give as a gift or to buy for yourself.

Of course, the idea is to give it to someone else, at least the idea of making it the final entry in The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide is. This would be a great gift for the die-hard Steve Martin fan who started buying his books over forty years ago with Cruel Shoes. Bunches of other people will like it, too.

You can order A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection from any bookseller by using the ISBN code, or you can save almost ten bucks at Amazon.

And with that, The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide is over, but we still have the Master List coming Friday, and for Thanksgiving PopCult will bring you something that won’t take much effort on my part, since it’s a holiday and nobody will be reading this blog.