Art Spiegelman

Pulitzer Prize - winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman (born 1948) is recognized as an influential player in the world of underground comics and graphic arts. His graphic novel series "Maus"ushered in a period of both change and commendation for the comics genre with its brilliant, in - depth treatment of the Holocaust.

Early Life

Art Spiegelman was born February 15, 1948, in Stockholm, Sweden. While in Poland, his father Vladek Spiegelman and mother Anja (Zylberberg) were detained in the Polish ghettos reserved for Jews, and later taken to concentration camps. They both survived, but not without sustaining permanent mental and emotional damage. Spiegelman's mother struggled with debilitating depression for the remainder of her life, while his father became frugal to the point of it being an obsession and difficult to deal with. In an 1986 interview with People, Spiegelman admitted that it was only after leaving home that he realized "that not everybody had parents who woke up screaming in the night." A second son - Spiegelman's older brother, Richieu - never made it out of Poland. Separated from his parents, the Spiegelman's first born was the victim of a mercy killing carried out by an aunt before Nazi soldiers could take him away - poisoned along with herself and two cousins.

What was left of the Spiegelman family immigrated to the United States in 1951, when Art was three. They settled in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, New York. As a boy, Spiegelman took refuge in the light - hearted world of comics. In a 1989 interview with the Progressive's Claudia Dreyfus, Spiegelman remembers his mother playing a drawing game with him. "She would make a scribble and ask me to turn it into something . . . that made me realize I could do something with a pencil and a paper." He remembered realizing that comics were created by actual people, and from an early age, eschewed all other aspirations to become a cartoonist.

Spiegelman began by emulating his favorite graphic artists, like the cartoonists for Mad Magazine. He even started his own parody publication in the 1960s, which he titled Blasé, as well as contributing comics to his Junior High school newspaper. By the time he was 14, he was selling his work to the Long Island Post and hoping to attend an art school that would allow him to pursue his ambition to become a professional cartoonist. His parents wanted him to invest in Dentistry school, but the young Spiegelman was not to be cowed. While attending the High School of Art and Design in New York City, Spiegelman's talent was solicited by a scout from United Features Syndicate to produce a syndicated comic strip. Spiegelman knew that he would find the grind of working under constant deadlines dull and taxing, and turned the offer down.

Education

In 1965, Spiegelman enrolled at Harpur College (now the State University of New York) in Binghamton, New York. While there he studied art and philosophy, all the while building a presence among the artistic circles of the underground comic scene. This underground graphic art was defined by the October, 2000 issue of Publishers Weekly as "idiosyncratic, introspective . . . [and] self - consciously intended to be received as art." Spiegelman worked as a creative consultant, artist, designer, editor, and writer for the Topps Chewing Gum corporation in Brooklyn from 1966 to 1988. He functioned as a jack - of - all - trades, designing Bazooka comics, baseball cards, and other novelty items - most notably "Wacky Packages" stickers and "Garbage Pail Kids" paraphernalia.

While at Harpur, Spiegelman contributed comics to his college newspaper and published work in other magazines like the East Village Other. Intoxicated by the freedom that he experienced in the college atmosphere in comparison to his sheltered and stressful home - life, the young artist shocked everyone around him by saying and doing whatever came to mind. Severe sleep deprivation and malnutrition eventually led to a mental and physical breakdown. Spiegelman finished school in 1968, at the age of 22, and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York. While there for a month he horded various material, which he later realized was a common behavior for a child of a holocaust survivor - imitating the parent's experience in the camps in an unconscious effort to understand the damaged individual's perspective. Soon after he returned home from the hospital, his mother, whose brother had recently died, took her own life.

Life as a Graphic Artist

Spiegelman dealt with his mother's death by throwing himself into his work. He moved to San Francisco and established a name for himself among the underground cartoonists that held court there. Beginning in 1972, he submitted comics under the pseudonyms Skeeter Grant, Al Flooglebuckle, and Joe Cutrate to publications like Real Pulp and Bizarre Sex. He also edited for Douglas Comix and published some graphic novels, among them Ace Hole, Midget Detective (1974) and Two - Fisted Painters Action Adventure (1980). In 1972, Spiegelman was asked to provide a piece for a collection called Funny Aminals. He had heard in a college lecture that African Americans used to be protrayed as mice in early animation, and translated the concept into the idea of representing Jewish characters as mice - "vermin" that the Germans wanted to "exterminate." He drew and authored a three - page comic for the collection that featured a Jewish mouse who listens to his father's account of living under the terror and tyranny of German Nazi cats in pre - WWII Poland, only to be taken to a camp named "Mauschwitz."

That same year (1972), he published a cartoon about his mother's suicide called Prisoner on the Hell Planet, then took a position as an instructor at the San Francisco Academy of Art from 1974 to 1975. Spiegelman returned to New York in 1975 to act as a contributing editor for Arcade: The Comics Revue through 1976. On July 12, 1977, Spiegelman married Françoise Mouly, a French architecture student with a penchant for the sophisticated work of French comic artists. They had two children, a daughter named Nadja Rachel, and a son named Dashiell Alan.

In 1978, when Spiegelman was 30, he began to research and work on an autobiographical comic strip based on the piece he had contributed to Funny Aminals. He hoped, as the 1999 St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers put it, "to tell his father's story, his own story, and a universal story of the Holocaust." He moved back to New York City and conducted an extensive series of interviews with his father to learn about the Holocaust experiences that his parents had endured. He has cited personal reasons for pursuing the strip, specifically a desire to find a way to connect with his thorny father after the death of his mother. He taped over 30 hours of material during their father/son interviews and traveled to his parents' home in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1978, and to Auschwitz and Birkenau in 1986 to see the sites for himself and view art created by survivors.

Spiegelman took a position teaching the history of comics for the New York School of Visual Arts from 1979 to 1987 and worked with Mouly in 1980 to found Raw, a showcase for international graphic art talent. He began releasing installments of his Funny Aminals piece, titled Maus, in Raw's second issue. By 1985, he had enough material to fill a book, but was repeatedly informed that the idea was unpublishable. Finally, Pantheon decided that it was worth the risk, and in 1986, Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale I: My Father Bleeds History was published. Once released, it quickly garnered both critical and commercial acclaim, making Spiegelman into an intellectual and cultural force to be reckoned with. He became a popular speaker for Jewish groups and college classes, and even found himself at the center of a documentary that was later aired on European television.

Sadly, Spiegelman's father died four years before the book was published, and never got to see the respect that his son's efforts had earned. The first edition of Maus sold over 150,000 copies, and was translated into 18 languages. An autobiographical piece, the graphic novel opens with a quote from Hitler, "The Jews are undoubtedly a race but they are not human." A Jewish mouse listens as his father describes life in Nazi - occupied Poland in strips that illustrate the ethnicity or nationality of the characters by portraying them as different animals - Jewish mice, German cats, Polish pigs, American dogs, British fish, French frogs, Swedish reindeer, and gypsy moths.

When it was released, Maus was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. It thwarted all efforts of categorization, and was listed on both non - fiction and fiction publication lists. In 1992, the Maus series won a special Pulitzer Prize, created specifically for Spiegelman's unique contribution to culture. Despite Spiegelman's statements that the depiction of his father's character in Maus was spurred largely by the author's own personal, pent - up anger, most readers found the Vladek character surprisingly likable. The 2004 Contemporary Authors Online stated that "by making the characters cats and mice . . . Maus and Maus II allow us as readers to go outside ourselves and to look objectively at ourselves and at otherwise unspeakable events." Although critics varied in their response to Maus's outlook, they whole - heartedly agreed that Spiegelman had managed to produce an innovative and stirring work of art.

In 1987, Spiegelman and Mouly released a compilation of comics from their publication, which they titled Read Yourself Raw. Spiegelman continued to create strips in the Maus storyline, and publish them in issues of Raw. In 1991, Maus: A Survivor's Tale II: And Here My Troubles Began was released. It continued the story, touching on the horrors of living in concentration camps. That same year, Spiegelman's work on Maus was showcased in an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and again at the Galerie St. Etienne (also in New York) in 1992. Spiegelman served as a contributing editor for the New Yorker from 1991 to 2003, often designing controversial cover art. One Valentine's Day cover depicted a Hasidic Jew kissing an African American woman, and another featured a child in Arabic headgear demolishing sand castles on the beach. Mouly joined the New Yorker as its art director in 1993, and remains in that position today.

In 1994, Spiegelman put the complete Maus collection on CD - ROM, and in 1996, HarperCollins released Spiegelman's first children's book - Open Me . . . I'm a Dog! - that tries to convince children that it is not a book, but an actual dog that was turned into a book by a curse. In 2000, HarperCollins published Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies, a collaborative effort from Spiegelman and Mouly that featured stories by graphic artists and children's illustrators with a decidedly underground flavor. Spiegelman and his family were in their Lower Manhattan home when the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Their daughter was at Stuyvesant High School, located next to the towers, and they spent the day trying to locate her and her brother.

On September 11, 2003, Spiegelman resigned as an illustrator for the New Yorker because he no longer felt in tune with their political agenda. He had spent a few years thinking about 9/11, and living through the aftermath, and decided to put together In the Shadow of No Towers. The large - format graphic novel was rejected by American publishers initially, and released in the German paper Die Zeit. It was later published in the United States on September 7, 2004 by Pantheon. Described by the September 2004 issue of Publisher's Weekly as "an inventive and vividly graphic work of non - fiction," and a "visceral tirade against the Bush administration," In the Shadow of No Towers was also described in the same review as "a 32 - page board book, like the ones babies teethe on - only bigger." Spiegelman has said that working on the book saved his sanity. In an interview with Kenneth Terrell for the September 2004 issue of US News and World Report, Spiegelman explains, "when I started off, I wasn't making a book. I was making pages while waiting for the world to end. But it [didn't] . . . So I decided, 'Well, if the world isn't going to end, I guess I can do a book.' "

The vision he witnessed first - hand of the north tower's steel framework glowing from the heat of the plane's impact becomes a central image - representative of a moment when time seemed to stand still. Spiegelman tells Terrell that the image helps focus the theme of "how provisional and ephemeral everything is . . . [that] what's made to last - and should - sometimes doesn't."

Champion of Challenge

Described by a Publishers Weekly reviewer as a "world - class pessimist," and quoted as claiming that "disaster is [his] muse," Spiegelman and his family currently reside in the SoHo district of Manhattan. When asked in the Terrell interview whether or not his chosen medium of "cartoons" still matter, Spiegelman replied that " 'comix' have lost their hold as a genuine mass media, so they're free to become a medium of thought. Print can offer the chance [for] reflection. Comix give you two sockets to plug into, both left and right brain. And they don't move while you're looking at them." Although Spiegelman's images may be technically stationary, his subject matter continues to provoke thought and feeling with its fluidity. In an interview for The New York Times with Esther Fein, he explained that "in reality, comics are far more flexible than theatre, deeper than cinema. It's more efficient and intimate. In fact, it has many properties of what has come to be a respectable medium, but wasn't always; the novel." Spiegelman, along with his wife and partner - in - crime, Mouly, continue to thrive, striving to make the world a better place - one comic at a time.

Books

Almanac of Famous People - Eighth Edition, Gale Group, 2003.

Authors and Artists for Young Adults - Vol. 46, Gale Group, 2002.

Marquis Who's Who, Marquis Who's Who, 2004.

Newsmakers 1998 - Issue 3, Gale Group, 1998.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers - Second Edition, St. James Press, 1999.

Periodicals

Newsweek August 30, 2004.

Publishers Weekly, October 16, 2000; September 6, 2004.

U.S. News & World Report, September 13, 2004.

Online

"Art Spiegelman," Contemporary Authors Online,http://www.galenet.galegroup.com (December 3, 2004).

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and author Art Spiegelman is best noted for his two-volume graphic novel series "Maus," whilch Dale Luciano described in the Comics Journal as "among the remarkable achievements in comics." An epic parable of the Holocaust that substitutes mice and cats for human Jews and Nazis, the work stands in contrast to much of Spiegelman's works, which have ranged from designing chewinggum cards to editing comic-book anthologies that include the "Little Lit" series for younger readers. Prior to creating "Maus" he was most well known in underground comics circles as publisher of the comix anthology Raw, which he produced with his wife, Françoise Mouly, beginning in the early 1980s. However, he has been a significant presence in graphic art since his teen years, when he wrote, printed, and distributed his own comics magazine. During his affiliation with the Topps Chewing Gum company Spiegelman also inspired the misguided enthusiasm of a generation of American children through his creation of the popular "Garbage Pail Kids" collectible cards.

Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Vladek and Anja, two survivors of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's massacre of six million Jews during World War II. As a young child, the Spiegelman family moved to the United States, where Art grew up in Rego Park, New York. "I think . . . that I learned to read from looking at comics," Spiegelman told Joey Cavalieri in Comics Journal, citing early exposure to the likes of Mad magazine and various superhero books. By the age of twelve, Spiegelman was drawing his own cartoons, and, as he told Cavalieri, "it became an obsession very quickly." By age thirteen, Spiegelman was illustrating for his school newspaper, and by age fourteen he had already made his first professional sale, a cover for the Long Island Post, for which he was paid fifteen dollars.

With his talent for art in evidence, Spiegelman entered New York City's High School of Art and Design where, as part of a cartoon course assignment, he wrote and illustrated a comic strip that attracted the interest of a New York publishing syndicate. The experience made Spiegelman aware that the parameters for conventional comics were too narrowly defined for his ideas. He sought and found a creative outlet with the burgeoning underground comics scene, including printing and distributing his own magazine, Blase: the title is French for 'apathetic' or 'world-weary.' While his actions appeared unusually enterprising for a teen, Spiegelman admitted to Cavalieri that he was still unsure what direction his talent would take him: "I just knew I wanted to do lines on paper and write at the same time."

Spiegelman was influenced by a number of artists working in the comics field, among them Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman, Mad artist John Severin, and Jack Davis, who drew baseball cards for Topps Chewing Gum. Eager to get his hands on cards with original Davis art on them, Spiegelman sent a copy of Blase to Topps, hoping that they would send him some cards in return. The company responded by complimenting his work and inviting him out to Topps headquarters for lunch. Spiegelman visited the production studios and returned home with a handful of Jack Davis originals. A few years later, during his first year at Harpur College, Spiegelman received a phone call from Topps asking if he would consider taking a summer job with the company. Accepting their offer, he soon became "resident tinkerer" at Topps, creating various novelty items. He also streamlined Topps's production process from an inefficient circuit between conception and realization to a smooth idea-to-artist procedure. "I sort of created a job that hadn't been there before because I was able to both write a bit and draw a bit," Spiegelman told Cavalieri. By the summer's end Spiegelman was an integral part of Topps's production, and the company asked him to continue working with them. He maintained his affiliation with the company for twenty-five years.

Spiegelman's employment with Topps included writing and drawing various card series and other humorous items. His biggest contribution, however, came about in response to another product that the company was planning. An executive at Topps was interested in issuing a series of cards featuring the miniaturized labels of supermarket products. Spiegelman, seeing little curiosity value in commercial artwork that was not antiquated enough to be charming, decided to poke fun at the project. He drew up a parody version of a company's package art. Spiegelman's loopy version of the product label was a hit with Topps, and "Wacky Packages" were born. Marketed with a stick of gum like baseball cards, "Wacky Packages" soon became a fixture of the 1970s alongside such items as the lava lamp, the hula-hoop, and black-light posters.

"Wacky Packages" offered a humorous alternative to the ever increasing onslaught of advertised products. The small sticker-cards depicted such skewed and vaguely familiar products as "Fright Guard" deodorant, "Bustedfinger" candy bars, and "Koduck" film—"for ducks." Some adults found "Wacky Packages" crude and remotely offensive. Children, however, were delighted with a product that appealed to their sense of humor, and they gleefully displayed the stickers on their bedroom doors, lunchboxes, and school books. In the 1980s Spiegelman mounted a second wave of humorous stickers parodying the popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. His "Garbage Pail Kids" sticker cards featured drawings of slovenly children accompanied by information that cited each child's more unsavory attributes.

While Spiegelman was devoting time to Topps, he never lost touch with the comics scene. In 1975 he joined fellow artist Bill Griffith to form Arcade, a comics anthology that highlighted the work of some of the best underground artists and writers, including Kim Deitch, Robert Crumb, and Spiegelman himself. He continued with the periodical for only a short time, however, because he felt that the pressure of deadlines was at odds with his creative work habits. While compilations of his own comics, such as Breakdowns and Two-fisted Painters Action Adventure, were published, Spiegelman then joined his wife and partner Mouly in producing the first issue of Raw. Designed to have less-frequent deadlines than Arcade: once or twice a year—Raw also featured adult comics from around the world. The material in Raw often centers on the confusion and pathos of modern life; whereas underground comics had been associated with more graphic and often sexual humor, Raw used the medium of graphic art to make readers think.

Public demand prompted Spiegelman and Mouly to compile the first three issues of Raw in book form as Read Yourself Raw. The magazine's success reinforced Spiegelman's belief that comics could do more than merely entertain, and also allowed him a medium for his own artistic output. Beginning with the second issue of Raw, Spiegelman began serializing "Maus," the work that would change both his and the comics world's perception of graphic art. As he told Cavalieri: "All of a sudden, I found my own voice, my own needs, things that I wanted to do in comics."

Although work on "Maus" began in earnest in the 1980s, the comic actually had its genesis as a three-page strip begun in 1972. Creating a strip for a compilation titled Funny Aminals (sic), Spiegelman was inspired while watching old cartoons featuring cats and mice. As he told Cavalieri, "this cat and mouse thing was just a metaphor for some kind of oppression." Drawing from his family background, he decided to explore his mother and father's experience in, and survival of, a Nazi concentration camp.

"Maus" starts with Spiegelman, representing himself as a anthropomorphized mouse, going to his father, Vladek, for information about the Holocaust. As Vladek's tale begins, he and his wife, Anja, are living in Poland with their young child, Richieu, at the outset of World War II. The Nazis, as cats, have overrun much of Eastern Europe, and their oppression is felt by everyone, especially the Jews/mice. The story recalls Vladek's service in the Polish army and subsequent incarceration in a German war prison. As he returns to Anja and his home, the Nazi "Final Solution"—to exterminate the entire Jewish race—is well under way. There is much talk of Jews being rounded up and shipped off to the camps, where they are either put to strenuous work or put to death. Vladek and Anja's attempt to flee is thwarted and they are sent to Auschwitz, Poland, site of one of the most notorious camps. As the first book of "Maus" concludes, Richieu has been taken from his parents by the Nazis, never to be seen again, and Vladek and Anja are separated and put in crowded train cars for shipment to Auschwitz.

As the second volume, And Here My Troubles Began, opens, Spiegelman and and his wife are visiting Vladek at his summer home in the Catskills. During the visit son and father resume their discussion. Vladek recounts how he and Anja were put in separate camps, he at Auschwitz and she at neighboring Birkenau. The horrors and inhumanity of concentration-camp life are related in graphic detail. Vladek recalls the discomfort of cramming three or four men into a bunk that is only a few feet wide and the ignominy of scrounging for any scrap of food to sate his unending hunger. His existence at Auschwitz is marked by agonizing physical labor, severe abuse from the Nazis, and the ever present fear that he—or Anja—may be among the next sent to the gas chambers. Despite these overwhelming incentives to abandon hope, Vladek is bolstered by his clandestine meetings with Anja and the discovery of supportive allies among his fellow prisoners. He manages to hold on until the war ends, then joins several other prisoners in making his way to safety. He eventually finds Anja and their reunion marks a happy point in Vladek's tale. After a fruitless search for Richieu, they move to Sweden where Spiegelman is born, and then travel to America. The horrors of the war scar Anja permanently however, and in 1968 she commits suicide. The book concludes with Art visiting Vladek just before his death in 1982.

When "Maus" first appeared in Funny Aminals, Spiegelman made no mention of Jews or Nazis. The protagonists were mice, persecuted because they were "Maus." Likewise, the antagonists were cats, or "Die Katzen," and they chased the mice, although "chasing" the mice meant rounding them up in camps for work, torture, and extermination. The closest the strip comes to an outright identification with the Holocaust is in the name of the concentration camp, "Mauschwitz." As Spiegelman began the expanded version however, he found that he had to write in terms of Jews and Nazis, but continued to retain his animal characters. As he explained to Cavalieri, "To use these ciphers, the cats and mice, is actually a way to allow you past the cipher at the people who are experiencing it. So it's really a much more direct way of dealing with the material." As Lawrence Weschler described "Maus" in Rolling Stone: "Spiegelman's . . . characterizations are charming and disarming—the imagery leads us on, invitingly, reassuringly, until suddenly the horrible story has us gripped and pinioned. Midway through, we hardly notice how strange it is for us to be having such strong reactions to these animal doings." Dale Luciano noted in the Comics Journal: "By making the characters cats and mice, the result is that the characters' human qualities are highlighted all the more, to an inexplicably poignant effect."

Summarizing the importance of "Maus" for younger readers, School Library Journal contributor Rita G. Keeler called the first volume, A Survivor's Tale, "a complex book" that "relates events which young adults, as the future architects of society, must confront, and their interest is sure to be caught by the skillful graphics and suspenseful unfolding of the story." Patty Campbell, writing in the Wilson Library Bulletin, commented that the book is "supremely important and appropriate for young adults. Not only because teenagers have always found the comic strip congenial, not only because it is a story of the pain of parent-child conflict, not only because it is a superbly original piece of literature, but also because it is a stunning evocation of the terror of the Holocaust—and we dare not let the new generation forget."

In the wake of "Maus" Spiegelman continued to create adult-themed comics, and also joined the staff of the New Yorker magazine for several years. He enjoyed the magazine's creative atmosphere until the events of September 11, 2001, changed the climate of the nation. It also changed Spiegelman, who created the first post-9/11 cover for the New Yorker and reflects on his feelings following 9/11 in In the Shadow of No Towers. He witnesses the destruction of the World Trade Center first-hand, living only blocks away, and also experienced fear for his children, who were at a nearby school at the time.

As a father, as well as an American and a pacifist, Spiegelman's feelings on the issue were enormously strong, and were also deeply critical of the government's reaction to the terrorism and the subsequent war with Iraq. Featuring cardboard pages the size of oldfashioned comics broadsheets, In the Shadow of No Towers was described by Newsweek reviewer Malcolm Jones as "deeply funny, subversive, silly and profound.... Mark Twain and Thomas Nast would recognize that old incendiary American cocktail of humor and rage."

In a lighter vein, Spiegelman has also produced several book specifically with a younger readership in mind, although containing his characteristic subversive humor. His picture book I'm a Dog! is a puppy-sized book with an attached leash that proclaims itself a dog under the spell of a wizard's curse. "It's a winning conceit, with ingenuous tongue-in-cheek illustrations," noted a Kirkus Reviews commentator. Deborah Stevenson, writing in the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, noted that the author's "original approach and dorky humor will make many kids eager to get their paws on" the book.

In 2000 Spiegelman joined collaborator Mouly in beginning the "Little Lit" comic anthology series, collecting works by such noted cartoonists and illustrators of children's books as Ian Falconer, Jules Feiffer, Walt Kelly, Barbara McClintock, and Maurice Sendak. Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies, the first book in the series, begins with Spiegelman's story of "Prince Rooster." Also included in this volume are renditions of the classic stories "Princess and the Pea" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" as well as the Japanese folktale "The Fisherman and the Sea Princess." The collection is rounded out by brainteasers and games created by noted graphic artists Bruce McCall, Charles Burns, and Chris Ware.

Strange Stories for Strange Kids features works by Sendak and Feiffer, among others, and also features jokes and activity pages. The second "Little Lit" collection also contains a 1942 episode of the classic comic strip "Barnaby," created by the late Crockett Johnson. The third volume of "Little Lit," It Was a Dark andSilly Night, features the results of fifteen contributors—including Lemony Snicket, Patrick McDonnell, William Joyce, Neil Gaiman, and Gahan Wilson—assigned by Spiegelman and Mouly with the task of beginning a story with the words "It was a dark and silly night...." Grace Oliff, writing in School Library Journal, praised the second "Little Lit" collection for its "sharp intelligence and unique imagination," while in a Horn Book review, Roger Sutton found the assembled cartoons and stories "purposeful . . . even when absurd." Reviewing the third volme for School Library Journal, Nancy Palmer wrote that "the variety of art and text, from the bizarre to the benign, offers a cast of cuckoos for just about every taste." Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg felt that Strange Stories for Strange Kids will excite readers of many ages," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that It Was a Dark and Silly Night is an "alternately cute and creepy volume." Commenting on the series as a whole, Andrew D. Arnold wrote in Time: "Thanks to the intelligence of editors Spiegelman and Mouly, you can't be too old to appreciate Little Lit."

The "Little Lit" books have raised the controversy characteristic of much of Spiegelman's work. Appraising Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies, a Horn Book review stated that "Many of the stories are illustrated with an affectionately retro flair," while according to Claude Lalumiere in January Online, the work is "a pretentious collection of misplaced nostalgia" geared more for adults than for children. "Spiegelman and Mouly's sophisticated collection . . . lingers at the crossroad between kids and adults, classics and parodies," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor, reflecting the opinion of several reviewers. In fact, creating a work that could be read on several levels was the ultimate aim of "Little Lit"'s editors. Talking with Booksense interviewer Christopher Monte Smith, Spiegelman explained why he and Mouly decided to focus on fairy tales: "The tales are kinetic, filled with transformations. There's a lot to draw and see. Fairy tales and folklore . . . offer archetypal themes and memorable situations. We wanted to do a book for all ages, that could hold the interest of very young children and grown-ups."

Career

Freelance artist and writer, 1965—; Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, creative consultant, artist, designer, editor, and writer for novelty packaging and bubble gum cards and stickers, including "Wacky Packages" and "Garbage Pail Kids," 1966-89; artist and contributing editor, New Yorker magazine, 1991-2003. Instructor in studio class on comics, San Francisco Academy of Art, 1974-75; instructor in history and aesthetics of comics at New York School of Visual Arts, 1979-87. Advisory board member, Swann Foundation. Exhibitions: Artwork exhibited in numerous gallery and museum shows in the United States and abroad, including Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 1991; "The Road to Maus," at Galerie St. Etienne, New York, NY, 1992; New York Cultural Center; Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England; and Seibu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

Member

PEN.

Awards, Honors

Playboy Editorial Award for best comic strip, and Yellow Kid Award (Italy) for best comic strip author, both 1982; regional design award, Print magazine, 1983, 1984, and 1985; Joel M. Cavior Award for Jewish Writing, and National Book Critics Circle nomination, both 1986, both for Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History; Inkpot Award, San Diego Comics Convention, and Stripschappenning Award (Netherlands) for best foreign comics album, both 1987; Special Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle award, LosAngeles Times book prize, and Before Columbus Foundation Award, all 1992, all for Maus: A Survivor's Tale II, and Here My Troubles Began; Guggenheim fellowship; New York Times Book Review Notable Book designation, 2004, for In the Shadow of No Towers; named chevalier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2005.

Writings

For Children

• I'm a Dog, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.
• (Editor, with wife, Françoise Mouly) Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
• (Editor, with Françoise Mouly) Little Lit 2: Strange Stories for Strange Kids, Joanna Cotler Books (New York, NY), 2001.
• (Editor, with Françoise Mouly) It Was a Dark and Silly Night . . . , HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

Comics

• The Complete Mr. Infinity, S. F. Book Co., 1970.
• The Viper Vicar of Vice, Villainy, and Vickedness, privately printed, 1972.
• Zip-a-Tune and More Melodies, S. F. Book Co., 1972.
• (Compiling editor with Bob Schneider) Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations, D. Links, 1972.
• Ace Hole, Midget Detective, Apex Novelties, 1974.
• Language of Comics, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1974.
• Breakdowns: From Maus to Now, an Anthology of Strips, Belier Press, 1977.
• Work and Turn, Raw Books, 1979.
• Every Day Has Its Dog, Raw Books, 1979.
• Two-fisted Painters Action Adventure, Raw Books, 1980.
• Maus: A Survivor's Tale, My Father Bleeds History, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1986.
• (Editor with Françoise Mouly, and contributor) Read Yourself Raw: Comix Anthology for Damned Intellectuals, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1987.
• (With Françoise Mouly) Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1988.
• Maus: A Survivor's Tale II, and Here My Troubles Began, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1991.
• Comics included in anthologies, such as Don Donahue and Susan Goodrich, editors, The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics, D. Links, 1974; and Nicole Hollander, Skip Morrow, and Ron Wolin, editors, Drawn Together: Relationships Lampooned, Harpooned, and Cartooned, Crown, 1983.

Other

• (Editor, with Françoise Mouly and R. Sikoryak) Warts and All: Drew Friedman and Josh Alan Friedman, Penguin (New York, NY), 1990.
• (Illustrator) Joseph Moncura March, The Wild Party: The Lost Classic, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.
• (Author of introduction) Bob Adelman, editor, Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.
• (With Chip Kidd) Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 2001.
• In the Shadow of No Towers, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2004.
• Contributor to numerous underground comics. Editor of Douglas Comix, 1972; editor, with Bill Griffith, and contributor, Arcade, the Comics Revue, 1975-76; founding editor, with Mouly, and contributor, Raw, beginning 1980.

Adaptations

Maus has been translated into eighteen languages, including Japanese, Korean, and Hungarian.

Biographical and Critical Sources

Periodicals

• Booklist, December 15, 2001, Gillian Engberg, review of Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids, p. 726; October 1, 2004, Gordon Flagg, review of In the Shadow of No Towers, p. 320.
• Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September, 1997, Deborah Stevenson, review of I'm a Dog!, p. 28; January, 2002, review of Little Lit, p. 185.
• Christian Century, December 14, 2004, review of In the Shadow of No Towers, p. 20.
• Comics Journal, August, 1981, Joey Cavalieri, "An Interview with Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly," pp. 98-125; December, 1986, Dale Luciano, "Trapped by Life," pp. 43-45; April, 1989, Michael Dooley, "Art for Art's Sake," pp. 110-117.
• Entertainment Weekly, November 2, 2001, review of Little Lit, p. 70.
• Five Owls, March-April, 1988, p. 61.
• Horn Book, September, 2000, Roger Sutton, review of Little Lit, p. 590; January-February, 2002, Roger Sutton, review of Little Lit 2, p. 73.
• Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1997, review of I'm a Dog!, p. 880; July 1, 2003, review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night, p. 915.
• Newsweek, August 30, 2004, Malcolm Jones, "High Art," p. 51.
• New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1991, pp. 1, 35-36; December 21, 1997, p. 18; January 20, 2002, review of Little Lit 2, p. 14.
• Publishers Weekly, April 26, 1991; October 10, 1994, p. 61, September 4, 2000, review of Little Lit, p. 106; September 3, 2001, review of Jack Cole and Plastic Man, p. 67; November 19, 2001, review of Little Lit 2, p. 66; August 4, 2003, review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night, p. 80.
• Reform Judaism, spring, 1987, Aron Hirt-Manheimer, "The Art of Art Spiegelman," pp. 22-23, 32.
• Rolling Stone, November 20, 1986, Lawrence Weschler, "Mighty 'Maus,'" pp. 103-106, 146-148.
• School Library Journal, May, 1987, Rita G. Keeler, review of Maus: A Survivor's Tale, p. 124; March, 2002, Grace Oliff, review of Little Lit 2, p. 221; September, 2003, Nancy Palmer, review of Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night, p. 208.
• Voice, June 6, 1989, Art Spiegelman, "Maus and Man," pp. 21-22.
• Voice of Youth Advocates, June, 1992, p. 133; October, 2001, review of Little Lit, p. 271.
• Wilson Library Bulletin, February, 1987, Patty Campbell, "The Young Adult Perplex," pp. 50-51, 80.

Online

• Booksense.com,http://www.booksense.com/ (March 7, 2005), Christopher Monte Smith, interview with Spiegelman.
• DC Comics Web site,http://www.dccomics.com/ (January 2, 2004), review of Jack Cole and Plastic Man.
• January,http://www.januarymagazine.com/ (June 2, 2003), Claud Lalumiere, review of Little Lit.
• Little Lit Web site,http://www.little-lit.com/ (March 7, 2005).