MICK STEVENS is a cartoonist living on Martha’s Vineyard. He’s been drawing funny pictures since he was 6 years old, back in Portland, Ore. He continued to draw throughout his early school years, a hitch in the U.S. Navy, and for the rest of his adult life, working at many temporary jobs to pay the rent, and accumulating a world-class collection of rejection slips, but always finding time to draw and submit his work to magazines and other publications.
Eventually, he began to concentrate on the New Yorker, sending weekly batches of drawings. For some time, the result of this was only more rejection slips (though they were of much higher quality). He began to sell ideas, but not his drawings, to the magazine, which they farmed out to their existing contract artists at the time, among them Charles Addams, who drew up a dozen or so based on Mick’s ideas, which appeared in the magazine. After a couple of trips to New York from San Francisco to meet his heroes and make weekly in-person visits to the magazine, Mick finally managed to sell his first cartoon, and immediately moved to New York City, where he continued to visit the offices of the magazine in person each week, but was still not able to penetrate the wall between the established artists and wannabes like himself.
During this time, he received much encouragement from one of the newer regulars at the New Yorker, Jack Ziegler, who became a friend and mentor, and he met Roz Chast, Sam Gross, and Bob Mankoff (a future New Yorker cartoon editor, but at the time just one of the gang of cartoonists who showed up each week to show their work). After many weeks, there came a day when, for reasons unknown, Mick was admitted through the door (a physical as well as metaphorical door) to a dimly lit, mysterious corridor which led to the office of Lee Lorenz, then cartoon editor at the magazine. Lee saw his work, but was still unimpressed, and Mick was sent back to the purgatory of the reception area and the slotted window for a while longer. More sales followed not long afterward, however, and he was once again allowed through that special door. He continued showing or sending 10 cartoons a week to the New Yorker (which he still does, although now via email).
He received a contract at the magazine in 1979, and has been a regular contributor ever since, a span of more than 43 years as of this writing. His work has also appeared in many other magazines, including Reader’s Digest, Barron’s, Air Mail, and elsewhere.Books include Poodles From Hell (in collaboration with Charles Monagan), If Ducks Carried Guns, Things Not to Do Today, and a collection: A Mystery, Wrapped in an Enigma, Served on a Bed of Lettuce. His work has appeared and continues to appear in many publications and collections of cartoons, including The Rejection Collection, Volumes 1 and 2, several collections by fellow cartoonist and author Bob Eckstein, and most of the many New Yorker cartoon collection books. He has illustrated books by other authors, including The Lobster Theory, a book about learning and playing the saxophone by Greg Fishman. (Mick is also a dedicated amateur saxophonist.)
