Stan Mack

Stan Mack is an American cartoonist, illustrator and author best known for his observational comic strip Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies, which ran in The Village Voice for more than 20 years. He was an early pioneer of documentary cartooning and is the author of numerous graphic nonfiction books addressing a wide range of social and historical topics.

His work has appeared in publications including Esquire, New York Magazine, Modern Maturity, Print, and Natural History among others.

Mack's Adweek comic strip, Stan Mack’s Outtakes, covered the New York media scene for more than a decade.

A collection of his work for The Village Voice was published in 2024 by Fantagraphics Books.

Early life and education
Mack was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1958 with a degree in illustration.

He served in the United States Army, stationed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, in the Department of Social Sciences. In 1960, his work won first place in an all-Army art contest in the Drawings and Cartoons category.

Career as an observational cartoonist
In the early 1960s, Mack moved to New York and found work as an art director. His first job was at a pulp publication called Climax.i He was later hired to be art director of the New York Herald Tribune’s Book Week, until the publication closed in 1968. Throughout this time, he also worked as a freelance illustrator.

New York Times
In 1969, Mack joined the New York Times as the Art Director of the New York Times Book and Education Division. From 1969 to 1973, Mack was the art director for The New York Times Magazine and later the New York Times Book Review. During this period, his artistic influences included designers and art directors including Peter Palazzo, Henry Wolf, Herb Lubalin, Milton Glaser, Saul Bass, George Lois and journalists Jimmy Breslin and Dennis Duggan.

For the Times, he contributed nonfiction comic strips for the travel and lifestyle sections of the paper. In 1973, he accompanied reporter Georgia Dullea on a feature story assignment, creating sketches to complement Dullea’s article.i But when he started jotting down overheard dialogue, Dullea discovered that Mack’s quotes were better than hers.

Mack ultimately resigned from the New York Times to explore his interest in drawing real people.

National Lampoon
In the early 1970s, while still the Art Director of the New York Times Magazine, Mack started experimenting with the comic strip format. In 1972 he created “Mules Diner” for the National Lampoon.

The Village Voice
In 1974, Mack met with graphic designer Milton Glaser, who was then redesigning The Village Voice. Mack proposed that he wander the city, sketching and writing down overheard conversations, and create a one-time piece for the paper. Glaser agreed, but asked him to do it as a weekly comic strip.i

The resulting Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies was notable for its semi-documentary feel with dialogue drawn from Mack's own observations. 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 into crowds. But most of all I learned to listen to what ordinary people have to say."

When it appeared in the paper, a line above the comic strip read, "Guarantee: All Dialogue Reported Verbatim." The guarantee changed in the 1980's, to "All Dialogue Overheard" and then to "All Dialogue in People's Own Words."

The earliest strips were comic snapshots. Mack would hang out in public places, bars mostly, and eavesdrop on conversations. Over the years, he addressed more complex topics—including AIDS, gentrification, racism, and homelessness—and the strips lengthened into short stories while maintaining much of the ironic bite of the early work.

A musical revue based on dialogue appearing in the comic strip was staged by the Manhattan Theater Club in 1981. The production, called “Real Life Funnies,” was written by Howard Ashman with songs by Alan Menken and featured performances by Janie Sell, Pamela Blair and Dale Soules.

Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies ran in the Village Voice from 1974 until 1995, when the paper’s editor dropped Real Life Funnies along with several other features, despite protest from Voice staffers.

AdWeek
Mack began creating “Out Takes,” a weekly comic strip for AdWeek Magazine, in 1981. The strip focused on the nuances, idiosyncrasies and humor of the advertising business. To create the strip, Mack visited commercial shoots, creative meetings, new business pitches and strategy sessions at agencies around New York City. If requested, Mack would disguise the identity of the agencies, executives, or products mentioned in the meetings.

Other publications
In 1995, as part of a redesign, Mack created a comic strip for Modern Maturity magazine called Stan Mack’s True Tales. This was followed in 1997 by a series of docu-comics for Natural History Magazine.

Mack created a monthly comic strip series called Dispatches for the New York Times Suburban Sections. One strip in 2000 caused controversy when he chronicled the last days of the life of his partner, Janet Bode, who died of breast cancer on December 30, 1999.

Mack continued to profile the media and advertising business with a strip called “Stan Mack’s Real Mad: True Tales from Inside the Ad Biz” which began publication in MediaPost in 2014.

“Stan Mack’s Real Lives” ran on whowhatwhy.org from 2021–2022.

Personal life
Mack met his first wife, Gail Kredenser when the two worked at the New York Herald Tribune. The couple were married in 1966 and had two sons.

Mack lived in New York’s Greenwich Village neighborhood for more than 30 years.

A collection of Mack’s original children’s book illustrations, proofs, and books, is archived at the Elmer L. Anderson Library at the University of Minnesota.

Mack had an 18-year relationship with the writer Janet Bode. Following Bode’s death at the age of 56, Mack wrote and drew Janet & Me: An Illustrated story of Love and Loss as a memoir of their life as a couple, his time as her caregiver, and her experience fighting the disease. The book highlighted the lack of transparency between patients and doctors, and the torment of dealing with insurance companies.”

While promoting the memoir about Bode, Mack became an outspoken voice for care-giving and participated in panel discussions about coping with cancer.

Mack married writer-editor Susan Champlin in 2010. The couple have collaborated on two historical graphic novels for young people: The Pickpocket, the Spy, and the Lobsterbacks (original title Road to Revolution!) and Our Fight, Our Time, (original title Fight for Freedom)

Children’s books
Potato Talk (1969) (as illustrator)

The Preposterous Week (1971) (as illustrator)

The Brownstone (1973) (as illustrator)

10 Bears in My Bed: A Goodnight Countdown (1974)

Where's My Cheese (1977)

The Runaway Road (1980)

Belmont the Bat Catcher and other Nutty Number Tales (1983)

Graphic novels
The Story of the Jews: A 4,000 Year Adventure (1998)

Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss (2004)

Revolting Rebels (2024; formerly Taxes, the Tea Party, and Those Revolting Rebels: A History in Comics of the American Revolution, 2012)

Collections
Stan Mack’s Out-Takes (1984)

Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995 (2024)

With Gail Kredenser
The ABC of Bumptious Beasts (1966)

One Dancing Drum (1971) (winner of The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year 1971)

With Janet Bode (non-fiction)
Heartbreak and Roses: Real Life Stories of Troubled Love (1994)

Hard Time: A Real Life Look at Juvenile Crime and Violence (1996)

For Better, For Worse: A Guide to Surviving Divorce for Preteens and Their Families (2001)

With Susan Champlin
The Pickpocket, the Spy, and the Lobsterbacks (2024; formerly The Road to Revolution, 2009)

Our Fight, Our Time (2024; formerly Fight for Freedom, 2012)