Good news and bad news. The bad news: The New Yorker has made yet another cartoonist uncomfortable by running a cartoon eerily similar to his work. The good news: This time the culprit is not Harry Bliss! Bliss, you'll recall, is the New Yorker cartoonist who came under fire twice in May, once for an uncredited "homage" to comic book illustrator Jack Kirby, duplicated for the magazine's caption contest, and once for a near-perfect facsimile of a cartoon by John Rau. The cartoon above and to the right is also for the New Yorker's caption contest, drawn by Paul Noth. The Wall Street Journal's health blog noticed it looks just like a Cleveland Plain Dealer cartoon from more than two years ago, above and to the left. Here's what the cartoonist had to say:

The similarities were a bit too much for the Cleveland artist, Plain Dealer cartoonist Jeff Darcy. “While it’s not uncommon for cartoonists to come up with similar ideas, this example is getting a little too close for comfort,” he said in an email to the Health Blog, after we’d asked about the two cartoons.

Noth, though, said he's constantly having to kill his New Yorker cartoons because other people so frequently publish similar ideas — and that's just in the time between submission and publication. It's hard to tell if that's the truth or if Noth just STOLE that rejoinder from one HARRY BLISS.

[WSJ]