Secret Identity: Art Spiegelman's Life Work

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CARTOONIST ART SPIEGELMAN HAS ACCOMPLISHED a lot in his career. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his stunning graphic novel, "Maus," about his parents' lives during the Holocaust, and he's achieved critical acclaim for his work with the New Yorker, the Raw comics anthology magazine and his 9/11 book, "In the Shadow of No Towers."

But when he talks about the highlight of his career, he's not talking about one of those things. He's talking about his appearance on "The Simpsons" last year, where fellow comic book creators Alan Moore and Daniel Clowes joined him.

"I know it's a great achievement — just ask my son," Spiegelman says, laughing. "I loved doing it. I love 'The Simpsons,' always have. I thought it was a great honor to say, 'A "Maus" is in the house.'"

Spiegelman, who is in town signing at Politics & Prose on Friday, has two new books out. One is an expanded reprint ofhis 1978 book, "Breakdowns," which is expanded with an introductory comic to provide context for the reprint and an essay explaining the introduction.

"[The introduction] is a way of allowing people to understand the person who did the work in 1978, and also use what I learned after 'Breakdowns' and reapply it to the Modernist concerns that were in the 'Breakdowns' book," Spiegelman says.

The new book, now titled, " ">Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!," is a whopping 14 inches tall by 10 inches wide. And the content matches the book's physical grandness. Even after 30 years, the content is still fresh and as riveting as it was when it first came out.

"I felt like I actually made something new that was worth making," Spiegelman says. "The opportunity to have this come out again didn't feel like me necessarily looking at some lesser self that evolved into the person who did 'Maus' or whatever, but more like other work which is equally mature."

Maturity is an important word, as there are parts of "Breakdowns" that are definitely not for children, and include an early "Maus" comic, and some experimental strips. It was those naughty panels that made Spiegelman wonder whether the book could be republished. "I'm still living in an earlier version of America," he says. "One in which there are rational people in charge, the economy isn't falling apart and, my God, where pornography is pornography, and not just naughty bits."

When "Breakdowns" first came out in 1978, and shortly after when Raw magazine debuted, the market for underground comix was dramatically different — and it certainly wasn't available in your local bookstore.

"It was really like working in an absolute vacuum," Spiegelman says. "There wasn't contingency for this kind of work — it was a wilderness for cartoonists who weren't trying to do newspaper comics or superheroes."
The idea that Spiegelman would be appearing at a major book store like Politics & Prose was something that he couldn't have imagined.

"There was one moment where it was really arid," he says. "And from that place, one could never have conceived of a place where the one growth area in bookstores is comics.

Two of Spiegelman's finest works, "Maus" and "No Towers," have come from a place of great tragedy — the Holocaust and 9/11. "Breakdowns" seems to deviate from that tradition. Sort of.
"When I'm feeling good, I don't feel like I have to work," he says. "Work is a way of reattaining balance because there's really something gnawing at me. But ['Breakdowns'] wasn't born of that exactly. I just got to relive my own personal traumas, I guess."

While "Breakdowns" is not kid-friendly, Spiegelman's other new book, "Jack and the Box," about a boy's encounter with a toy, is perfect for young readers. Published by Raw Junior, "Jack" is part of the Toon Books line, which Spiegelman runs with his wife, New Yorker and Raw alum Françoise Mouly.

While it might seem strange for one man to do very mature work and work geared toward the very young, Spiegelman sees the process of creating each to be very similar. "The work in 'Breakdowns' is built on very severe limitations, whether it be do a comic where the words and pictures don't line up at the same panel [or] a strip where the end of the comic is in the middle of the page," he says.

Doing the book for children allows Spiegelman the opportunity to challenge himself as a cartoonist — making a book that can be read by a child with a first-graders' vocabulary.
"It takes advantage of my bi-polar nature, I guess," Spiegelman says. "To have a book a book for adults and really mean it, and a book really for very young readers, is two different facets of me."

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW; Fri., Nov. 7, 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Scott A. Rosenberg for Express
Photo courtesy Pantheon