Stan Mack is an award-winning cartoonist and former art director of
the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has created cartoon features
for Adweek, Bon Appetit, Modern Maturity, Natural History, the New
York Times and the New Yorker. He has authored and/or illustrated
over a dozen books for children, teens (in collaboration with Janet
Bode) and adults including The Story of the Jews: A 4,000 Year
Adventure—A Graphic History Book.
Stan Mack is available to speak on the following topics:
Drawing Comics
Graphic Novels
Jewish Lights, a Vermont publisher specializing in books on Jewish
traditions and culture, doesn't publish a lot of graphic novels,
but the two released by the house have managed to exceed all
reasonable expectations.
First published in 2006, Steve Sheinkin's award-winningRabbi
Harveygraphic novel series, eccentric tales about a funny and very
wise Rabbi in the old West, has sold more than 50,000 copies across
its three volumes. And in 2001, the house acquired rights to
formerVillage Voicecartoonist Stan Mack’s out-of-print work,The
Story of the Jews: A 4,000-Year Adventure, a graphic history of the
Jewish people originally published by Villard, which has gone on to
sell more than 20,000 copies in the Jewish Lights edition.
That’s a lot of sales for a book Matlins almost didn’t publish. He
rejected the manuscript after he read it the first time. Undaunted,
two years later Sheinkin resubmitted the book to Jewish Lights;
this time Matlins passed the manuscript on to his staff. To his
amazement, everyone loved it and Matlin agreed to publish.According
to Stuart M. Matlins, publisher and editor-in-chief atJewish
Lights, a book appealing to the niche Jewish market can be
considered a success if it sells 5,000 copies. The Rabbi Harvey
graphic novels (three books between 2006 and 2010), have been in
print for nearly 10 years and sold tens of thousands of copies in
the U.S. and international markets combined.
The appeal of theRabbi Harveygraphic novels lay in Sheinkin’s
hilarious (and educational) combination of classic Jewish folktales
with the tropes of the Hollywood western. The books offer a comic
version of Talmudic wisdom applied to a succession of crazy
problems and riddles brought to the good Rabbi by neighbors looking
for advice. Add Sheinkins’ wacky stick-figure drawing style and the
result is a series of charming Jewish "Westerns" starring the
clever rabbi.
Matlin said the Jewish Lights is dedicated to finding books that
help people, "find meaning in their lives," and the Rabbi Harvey
titles seem to do just that. And while the books are popular with
children, Matlins said, Sheinkin’s comics appeal to ministers,
priests, rabbis, indeed, the whole family. The series has also been
translated into French and Portuguese. Matlins suggested that
because the Jewish communities are smaller in those countries, the
books are finding success by attracting readers from other
communities.
It’s a different story for Stan Mack’s smart and funny history of
the Jews. Matlin said he loved the book when it was first published
by Villard in 1998. “I wished we had published it. It’s
inordinately brilliant, clever, and absolutely historically
accurate," he said. When he found out the book was out of print,
“It took only seconds for me to accept and we published it in
paperback.”
While these two graphic novels have found success, Matlins said the
bigger problem is finding more comics content that is appropriate
for Jewish Lights.
These days Steve Sheinkin is writing history-related books and has
put theRabbi Harveyseries on hold since 2010. But Jewish Lights is
excited to be working with two new graphic novelists on original
work. Matlins declined to provide more information about the two
artists at this time, but said the house has worked for two years
with one of the authors, who has been inspired by the Rabbi
Harveyseries. He expects to publish one of the authors in 2016 and
the other in 2017.
Looking back, Matlins described both Sheinkin and Mack’s works as
unique, noting that he’d never seen comics like this before.
Comics, once a niche market, have found a much bigger audience by
offering broader, more diverse content. Besides, he said, “any time
you do anything new or different, not everyone will like it, but
those who do like it willreallylike it.”
*Publishers Weekly*
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