Commentary

The Found Comedy Of Stan Mack, Now In Book Form


The irony, the humor, the nuance! It’s alive! And it’s a miracle that it all fits.

I’m referring to “Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions and Hijinx of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995,” an oversized compendium (329 pages) of cartoons that captured (and captivated) the city during those tumultuous years.

Mack’s strip of found comedy was often the first thing a reader of the smart and insider-y downtown paper, the Village Voice, would turn to in those days.

Indeed, paging through the book is like taking a walk through city life and its pop cultural history with a visual storyteller as a guide who’s as good as it gets.

Not only can Mack draw, but man can he eavesdrop! It’s as if he was imbued with supersonic hearing and listening intuition, plus the talent to contextualize it all in a couple of frames.

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As with the city itself, there is always something new to see in each cartoon, packed as each panel is with quirky characters, sophisticated line drawings and the paradox of actual human overheard conversations. You could get lost (good lost) for weeks soaking in the 2.5 pound book’ pages.

I had always been a fan of Stan’s “all dialogue 100% verbatim” strips in the Voice.

But I also got the pleasure, early in my career, to see Mack around the offices of Adweek when we were both there. Clay Felker, who with Milton Glaser had started New York magazine, later become the editor of Adweek for a short time and hired Stan to do an equivalent “Real Life Funnies” strip about the ad business called “Out Takes.”  

It ran from 1981 to 1991.

When I recently got the chance to chat with Stan, I asked him about the difference between overhearing “real people” stories on the street versus observing ad folks in the more contained environments of an agency office or a shoot.  

Below is the interview, edited for length and clarity.

MB: How did you find your way into the advertising stories?

Stan Mack: I’d been an illustrator prior to and in the early days of doing “Real Life Funnies.” There were lots of advertising assignments around, so I already knew a number of art directors—at a time when creatives were big deals.

In those days, agencies didn’t have the defensive barriers of today. I could call an art director directly, ask what he was doing. When I asked if I could come by, he’d say “sure.”

Those creatives were funny, clever -- and in a way, exhibitionists. It was built into their job to come up with something new, different, and entertaining. And almost always, the human interaction between a copywriter and an art director was built-in funny.

In those says, they were also outspoken, opinionated, and more free-wheeling…and the entire business seemed on speed. So I’d almost always walk away with a story that had a beginning, middle, and end, all in one day.

 MB: Tell me what you mean by “the entire business seemed on speed.”

 Mack: In my experience, ad folks were always under the gun. There was always the shadow of a client falling over everything. That client was tapping his toe and counting dollars.

It was a high-speed business.  If I went to a shoot, they weren’t going to bring that elephant or talent back on another day. A movie scene that could take weeks was a one day’s shoot in advertising.

The same was true in creative sessions: If I went in when the art director were beginning to talk about a campaign or an ad -- even if it might continue with producers or account people the next day -- I would always leave with a punchline probably based on some human drama unique to that meeting.

MB: How’d you get all that dialogue down so fast? I think you mentioned in the book that you sometimes wrote on your cuffs!

Mack: I had a terrible long-shorthand, but I could read it. And the truth is, I had to move fast because no one was waiting for me. and because I was afraid to use my own words. To use my own words would have been to screw things up, and I didn’t dare do that.

But when I listened to people talk, I wrote down some words and not others…

When I got back to the studio, I moved around the words and sketches, thought about what I’d experienced, and the words and pictures flowed together into a comic strip.

In advertising, I was already on the horse, the starter gun had gone off, all I had to do was race in a more or less straight line to the finish line.

“Real Life Funnies” wasn’t like that. It was more like New York itself, messy and complicated.

MB: Finally, why’d you draw yourself as a little guy with a mustache?

Mack: I needed a character through whom the reader could quickly get into the story and see where he was taking them this week (he didn’t always appear, but did when needed). This funny little guy was taking the reader’s hand and guiding them to the story.

Why did he look like that? Back then, I had a mustache. And a square nose is easily recognizable. And I’m short, and short people are funny and easier to draw into a comic strip.

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