{"id":16846,"date":"2024-06-11T12:06:02","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T16:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=16846"},"modified":"2024-06-11T12:06:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T16:06:05","slug":"episode-591-stan-mack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-591-stan-mack","title":{"rendered":"Episode 591 – Stan Mack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 591:
\nStan Mack<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_591_-_Stan_Mack.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“To do them one week at a time is one thing, all you have to do is hit that darned deadline. But to look at 20 years in front of you . . . it’s such a wide span of what New York was in those days.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Legendary cartoonist & artist Stan Mack<\/a> pioneered documentary comics and bought New York’s multitudes to life with Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies (RLF)<\/em> in the Village Voice<\/em>, 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<\/a> (Fantagraphics)! We talk about winnowing down 1,000+ RLF<\/em> strips to 275 for this book, the comic’s secret origin and how we share some Milton Glaser<\/a> conceptual DNA, what he learned about cartooning and storytelling, the creeping realization that people were actually reading RLF<\/em>, and how he and the comic grew over 20+ years. We get into whether Real Life Funnies<\/em> and its snippets of street dialogue could work today when everybody just stares at their phones, how his pre-Voice<\/em> stint as art director at the New York Herald Tribune<\/em> made an editor out of him, the moment he realized he was a New Yorker, how he became an activist and used RLF<\/em> to highlight the squatters’ rights movement, the AIDS crisis, and more in NYC, how important the Village Voice<\/em> 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<\/a> & his new documentary, UNCROPPED<\/a>), Stan’s failure as a backup dancer for Lionel Richie, and a lot<\/em> more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read STAN MACK’S REAL LIFE FUNNIES: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“In art school, I was fascinated by the idea of people covering the world from the street.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n