STAN MACK'S REAL LIFE FUNNIES

Sketchbook in hand, Stan Mack haunted the New York City environs, watching, listening, overhearing, and interviewing its inhabitants. He drew a comic strip every week based on what he saw and heard, famously using verbatim dialogue for his graphic dramatizations. A mixture of humor, spontaneity, serendipity, and weirdness, Mack’s comic strip snapshots caught New Yorkers -- whether it is an extortionist calligrapher, a baby evading arrest at her first protest, a stroll up Broadway with a ferret, or an unlucky-in-love dolphin trainer -- being who they are in all their unguarded and uninhibited glory. "...a weekly treat that became addictive to many readers, including Voice writers like me. We couldn't turn away from the words and the images so innocently set down by the wandering artist as he overheard New Yorkers blurting out the social, political, sexual, and status anxieties of a generation. Indelibly candid, funny, startling, and occasionally even profound, these vignettes depict a magical lost metropolis that forever shaped our culture." - Jo Conason Also highly praised by Steve Heller, Roz Chast and Kurt Anderson. From Wikipedia: Stan Mack (b. May 13, 1936) is an American cartoonist best known for his series Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies, which ran in The Village Voice for over 20 years. His Adweek comic strip, Stan Mack’s Outtakes, covered the New York media scene. An early comic strip was Mule's Diner, which ran in the National Lampoon. Mack was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. He served in the United States Army, stationed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Social Sciences. Before turning to cartooning, Mack was the art director for Book Week at the New York Herald Tribune, and art director of the Book and Education Department and The New York Times Sunday Magazine at The New York Times. Real Life Funnies was notable for its semi-documentary feel: all dialog was culled from Mack's observations, and reported as "100% Guaranteed Overheard". He said of it: "This job gave me an excuse to accost people, to be pushy and aggressive. ... I learned to take notes on my shirt cuffs and walk backward in crowds. But most of all I learned to listen to what ordinary people have to say." With his late partner Janet Bode, he co-wrote several young adult nonfiction books, including Heartbreak and Roses, Hard Time, and For Better, For Worse. He has also created children's picture books, including Where's My Cheese and 10 Bears in My Bed. In 1998, Mack wrote and illustrated The Story of the Jews: A 4,000 Year Adventure, a humorous cartoon look at the history of the Jews. In his 2004 book Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss, he wrote about his eighteen-year relationship with Bode and her eventual death from cancer.