A collection of legendary absurdist comic strips about life in 1970s
New York City, now available in print for the first time in over thirty
years.
Every week, from 1978 to 1980, The Village Voice brought a new
installment of Mark Alan Stamaty's uproarious, endlessly inventive strip
MacDoodle St. Centering more or less on Malcolm Frazzle, a blocked
poet struggling to complete his latest lyric for Dishwasher Monthly,
Stamaty's creation encompassed a dizzying array of characters, stories,
jokes, and digressions. One week might feature the ongoing battle
between irate businessmen and bearded beatniks for control of a
Greenwich Village coffee shop, the next might reveal a dastardly plot
involving a genetically engineered dishwashing monkey, or the frustrated
dreams of an irascible, over-caffeinated painter, or the mysterious
visions of a duffle-coated soothsayer on the bus. Not to mention the
variable moods and longings of the comic strip itself....
And somehow, in the end, it all fits together. MacDoodle St. is more
than just a hilarious weekly strip; it is a great comic novel, a
thrilling, surprising, unexpectedly moving ode to art, life, and New
York City. This new edition features a brand-new, twenty-page
autobiographical comic by Stamaty explaining what happened next and why
MacDoodle St. never returned, in a unique, funny, and poignant look at
the struggles and joys of being an artist.
