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

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, an evening with a male liberationist, or an unlucky-in-love dolphin trainer -- being who they are in all their unguarded and uninhibited glory. This collection includes a foreword by CNN journalist Jake Tapper (The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor) and an afterword by Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle).