Bi-Stable Curious

My cartoon in this week’s New Yorker marks the ignominious return of a favorite recurring character.

The “duck-rabbit illusion,” created by an unknown artist, first appeared in the German humor magazine Fliegende Blätter in 1892. It was later popularized by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations and is what psychologists call a bi-stable (or multi-stable) percept.

These optical illusions fascinated me as a kid. Like most of my childhood obsessions, they began appearing in my cartoons almost from the start. Two unsuccessful early attempts to get the duck-rabbit into the New Yorker can be seen in today’s Cartoon Combat.

My first multi-stable percept cartoon made it into the magazine in August 2006. It featured the “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” illusion—originally created for Puck by W.E. Hill in 1915—shown here chatting with her more famous contemporary, Charles Dana Gibson’s “Gibson Girl.”

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It took over ten years before the Duck-Rabbit finally made its New Yorker debut in December 2014.

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Then, in July 2017, both illusions teamed up:

Signed Prints Available.

A psychologist emailed me to suggest that the bedside lamp should have been the famous Rubin Vase illusion, effectively making the drawing the Avengers of multi-stable percepts. I decided that was a bridge too far, because the vase wouldn’t really serve the joke.

One of my favorite duck-rabbit cartoons won’t be found in the New Yorker or on this Substack; instead, it is among the fifty never-before-published cartoons in my forthcoming collection, I Am Going to Eat You… And Other Awkward Truths. I hope to officially announce the book soon, but in the meantime, here is a preview:

Our first contender in this all-duck-rabbit showdown is Animal Barber.

And our challenger—the implications of which I suggest you avoid over-analyzing—is Bi-Stable Curious.

Now onto our main event: our second April Semi-Final match. As luck would have it, our first contender features another favorite recurring character—Dock ID.

Our challenger is the winner of last week’s Dairy State Mashup—Badger Care.

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