Drawing Laughs: How Sullivan County Cartoonists Lia Strasser and Bizzy Coy Made It to The New Yorker

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Playful, self-aware and just a little absurd — that defines the creative partnership between fellow Sullivan County cartoonists Lia Strasser and Bizzy Coy. The duo will bring that chemistry to Narrowsburg on February 22, for “Talk Toons,” a behind-the-scenes look at their work.

From Sullivan County Walk to The New Yorker
Strasser had been trying to break into The New Yorker for years before she approached Coy.

“I had been trying to submit cartoons to the New Yorker for quite some time before I approached Bizzy,” Strasser says. “And we took a nice walk and I said, ‘Listen, Bizzy, you know, I’ve got these cartoons, I have these drawings, and I think they’re wonderful, but nobody else does.’ And I was wondering if you might look at them and perhaps take a new perspective on some of the captions because Bizzy is a brilliant comedic writer.”

Coy’s initial response?

“She said, ‘No.’”

“That’s true. That’s true,” Coy says, laughing. “You know, but Leah’s persistent. You know, she’s a persistent person. She knows what she wants.”

Six months later, persistence paid off.

“She followed up with me about six months later,” Coy says. “And I had kind of gotten used to the idea. And I said, ‘All right, send me some of your cartoons.’ And she had a treasure trove of amazing cartoons. And it didn’t take much word smithing to kind of tweak her captions and tweak what she had. And it was really fun. It’s very addicting to like come up with a caption.”

Playing the Caption Contest
If you’ve ever flipped to the back page of The New Yorker, you know the caption contest: a single cartoon, thousands of possible punchlines.

Coy says that’s often exactly how they work.

“Leah, isn’t that exactly what I call it sometimes — is I’m playing caption contest with Leah’s illustrations?”

Strasser agrees. “As a matter of fact, I texted Bizzy an illustration late last night. Late last night, too late. ‘Hey, you know, do you want to play? The caption contest, the caption contest.’”

“You can guess what I said,” Coy adds.

“She said no.”

“Yeah, well Bizzy said no.”

“A lot of our comedy comes from my eagerness to connect and Bizzy’s not wanting to,” Strasser says. “And my persistence, you know, and the comedy there that ensues.”

The Hardest Part: Rejection
Breaking into The New Yorker means pitching — again and again.

Coy says, “Not giving up is the huge thing. Tenacity. And Leah is a model of tenacity. This has been a dream of hers for a long time and she really put the work in.”

Strasser’s advice to aspiring cartoonists isn’t about pen technique or joke structure. It’s about ego.

“It truly is developing this kind of rough outer shell and emptying out of your ego,” she says. “And that’s I think that’s actually the hardest thing — not making the drawings, not coming up with ideas, but the continual rejection. Because if you can get through that, there, you know, you might get a yes one day.”

Coy adds, “There is almost no rhyme or reason, which means you just have to generate a lot of work and see what sticks.”

Talk Toons in Narrowsburg: Cartoons, Rejects and Laughs
At Sunday’s Talk Toons event in Narrowsburg, the pair will project Strasser’s drawings and invite the audience to craft their own punchlines in a live cartoon caption contest.

“We’re going to bring some of those cool drawings up on the screen,” Coy says, “and we laugh as a group at the incredible things that people come up with. When we’ve done this in the past, it’s amazing. Don’t you agree, Lia? What people come up with that we never would have thought of.”

“It is so inspiring and so fun,” Strasser says. “What I love that happens is we’ll take one concept and sort of evolve it and push it further, which is definitely how Bizzy and I work together on our own submissions.”

And yes — they’ll share the rejects.

“It’s going to be all rejects,” Coy jokes. “We really do have a treasure trove… not only work that we’ve sold that also not only has appeared in The New Yorker but has appeared in the pages of the esteemed River Reporter… and in addition a wonderful array of rejected pieces that I think just haven’t found a home yet. But are still wonderfully funny, I think.”

The event is free. More information? Well.

“More information basically nowhere,” Strasser says. “That’s kind of all the information we have at this point. But yes, please connect with us on socials and we’re still looking forward to laughing together on Sunday.”

Image: A cartoon by Lia Strasser and Bizzy Coy. (The New Yorker)