Episode 591 - Stan Mack

The Virtual Memories Show

Legendary cartoonist & artist Stan Mack pioneered documentary comics and bought New York's multitudes to life with Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies (RLF) in the Village Voice, and now he joins the show to celebrate the publication of STAN MACK'S REAL LIFE FUNNIES: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995 (Fantagraphics)! We talk about winnowing down 1,000+ RLF strips to 275 for this book, the comic's secret origin and how we share some Milton Glaser conceptual DNA, what he learned about cartooning and storytelling, the creeping realization that people were actually reading RLF, and how he and the comic grew over 20+ years. We get into whether Real Life Funnies and its snippets of street dialogue could work today when everybody just stares at their phones, how his pre-Voice stint as art director at the New York Herald Tribune made an editor out of him, the moment he realized he was a New Yorker, how he became an activist and used RLF to highlight the squatters' rights movement, the AIDS crisis, and more in NYC, how important the Village Voice was to the city and to America in the '70s and '80s and why we need to bring it out of the pre-digital memory hole (a la DW Young & his new documentary, UNCROPPED), Stan's failure as a backup dancer for Lionel Richie, and a lot more. Follow Stan on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter