As a senior editor at New York Review Books, I admit that I’m not an expert on buildings. But as the editor of the NYRB’s comics imprint, I do consider myself proficient in assessing rat drawings. In 2015, upwards of six to ten people sent me the pizza rat video with comments along the lines of “you should see this” because I talked about rats a lot, both in real and cartoon form.
In my experience, the eight years since that video have seen rats creep ever more into the acceptable visual vernacular. This does not mean the quality of rat drawings improved. Too often we see badly drawn rats in our public and private spaces.
Case in point, the stern alien-like rat that served as the mascot of the briefly lived Staten Island Pizza Rats (a desperate rebranding by the now defunct Staten Island Yankees; go, Ferry Hawks!). During the team’s brief existence, the Order Sons of Italy in America, Fr. Vincent R. Capodanno Lodge #212, canceled an Italian Heritage Night at the team’s stadium due to the belief that “pizza rat” was an insult to Italian identity. So, rats can be trick…