Graphic Art: Art Spiegelman

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"I WANT A paternity test," declares the father of the graphic novel, Art Spiegelman. It turns out that the artist, writer and editor — world famous for (take your pick) creating the Garbage Pail Kids, drawing a series of arresting New Yorker covers, writing the Holocaust allegory "Maus," etc. — is highly critical of the form he is said to have created.

"When I come to the Corcoran [on May 4], I don't know what the lecture's being called, but in my head, it's called, "What the %@&*! Happened to Comic Books?"

"And what happened to them," Spiegelman continued, "was an escalating set of ambitions on the part of comix artists — and that I very much identify with — and some very good marketing. That baffles me, because merely by changing the name, one was able to get a situation where I can sit on an airplane, read a comic book and somebody will come over and say, 'Is that graphic novel any good?' And I'll say, 'Who's the dope in aisle C?'"

Spiegelman, editor of a long series of magazines and children's anthologies, is an unabashed advocate for the comic book form, whether in its most traditional sense or in its most fiendishly bizarre extremes. Characteristically outspoken, witty and insightful, Spiegelman is — with wife Francoise Mouly, the New Yorker's longtime art editor — part of one of America's great power couples. They have shared credit on many of Spiegelman's most prominent projects and are currently putting the finishing touches on another edition of "The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics."

"It's a fairly rigorously edited anthology of comics for very young children that were published in that golden age of comics between, say, 1940 and 1960," Spiegelman explains. "And it's finally due. Man, the maze and thicket of copyrights can drive any sane person crazy," said the Pulitzer winner and former mental hospital patient, who published the engrossing memoir and art history lesson "Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" late last year.

"The anthology that we're working on is testing the thesis that some of the great children's book literature of the 20th century actually appeared in the lowly comic books that librarians and teachers and parents were horrified by and in some instances even were putting on giant bonfires to avoid the pernicious effects they were having on children," said Spiegelman.

Wait, what?

"That was part of the hysteria that led to the Senate Comic Book Hearings in 1954 about the connection between comic books and crime and juvenile delinquency. There was a hysteria. The way I was phrasing it in the introduction I'm working on today is that they were sorta like the "Grand Theft Auto" of the early '50s."

Express also spoke with Spiegelman about Robert Crumb, day jobs, Raw magazine and the pleasures of "Krazy Kat."

» EXPRESS: How many books have you published for children now?
» SPIEGELMAN: Well, the "TOON Treasury" things have about eight books out and more coming. But prior to that, Francois and I had done something called "Little Lit," which was the applied art version of what had once been the pure art magazine Raw, where the comics were for adults.

We decided, sometime in the '90s, that what was really needed were really good comics for kids now. We'd seen all the headlines that said, "Comics: Not Just for Kids Anymore," and we'd go, "Oh, wait, but for kids, too." So I think we did three volumes of "Little Lit" in a few years in the late '90s and the beginning of the 2000s. And prior to that I had done a children's book in the early '90s called "Open Me ... I'm a Dog."

» EXPRESS: What will you be talking about at the Corcoran?
» SPIEGELMAN: Considering the age and the venerability of the institution and that I showed my very earliest comics work on their walls back in the 1960s, I figured, since I only know one thing — I only know comics — I would focus on the interlocking and crossing over of comics and what we tend to call art.

» EXPRESS: What kinds of advice would you like to offer to young artists?
» SPIEGELMAN: Keep your day job.

» EXPRESS: For Topps?
» SPIEGELMAN: Well, yeah, you're right, my day job was for Topps, but whatever it is — even if it's waiting tables — even now in a moment where comics really do have the possibility of allowing someone to pay the rent that way.

In some ways, you're less likely to become a gainfully employed cartoonist, making the kind of work you really want to make, than you would be to become a movie star. A lot more movies get made than comics. You know, it's not a nice, reputable industry where everybody can be assured of finding some niche in it.... The guy who did Superman worked for a publisher and got screwed. Michelangelo worked for a pope and got screwed. There's a cross-current of commerce that's probably unconnected to genuine self-expression and responsiveness to the world.

And there's certain places where that crosses over and allows one to actually make the two strands — art and commerce — actually meet on some level. And, in that sense, being a comics artist: It's a moment where you can at least put it up on a Web site. It makes it a lot easier for people to try it and see what kind of interaction they have with an audience than it might have been a generation back.

» EXPRESS: Do you spend any time nowadays working on or thinking about Garbage Pail Kids?
» SPIEGELMAN: Working on? No. Thinking about? Sure. I'm a parent (laughs hard). I know there's a book in the works I've been asked to write an introduction for.

Was that your moment? Is that what scarred you?
» EXPRESS: No. I always found them interesting, but I wasn't obsessed with them or anything.
» SPIEGELMAN: (laughs) But that was your moment. The thing about certain aspects of this kid culture, like Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids, is that they're very, very visible if you're in the zone — if you're a kid or a parent at the moment — but other than that, they're almost invisible. They're localized intellectual swine flu (laughs).

» EXPRESS: Yes, and in that sense, it's totally true for me.
» SPIEGELMAN: I was just placing you that way. 'Cause it used to be, decades ago, I'd go out and they'd say, "He's the person who did Wacky Packages!" Then there's a certain moment where they'd say, "And he's the person who did Wacky Packages!" and they would draw a blank stare, but if Garbage Pail Kids got mentioned they'd go (adopts awestruck tone), "Oh."

» EXPRESS: And now, of course, it's "Maus."
» SPIEGELMAN: Well, it remains "Maus," yeah. Right, if I'm going to a college now, it would be more likely that the reason I was brought there would have to do with "Maus," although I think there's still kinda the reverb of Garbage Pail Kids.

» EXPRESS: I always really liked your New Yorker covers. That might be even more of my moment. You've called the controversial Michelle and Barack Obama cover "cartooning working at its best."

» SPIEGELMAN: That's exactly what I think I'll be speaking about next week: What cartoons can do. And what they can do is pipeline into the way we process information and think.... I wasn't the artist who did the Obama cover, but I think I entered a mischievous strain into the New Yorker's DNA and it allowed that cover to happen.

» EXPRESS: Right: "The Kiss" was the first cover like that.
» SPIEGELMAN: Exactly: That started a new notion of how one could use the fact that the New Yorker was maybe the one magazine still existing where a cover [need] not be a photograph or an illustration — it could be a self-contained thought.

» EXPRESS: What was [Robert] Crumb's influence on you? And what kind of relationship do you have now?
» SPIEGELMAN: We're friends. We're going to be giving some kind of joint talk sometime in the fall when his "Book of Genesis" finally comes out. He took on doing a complete book of Genesis with every word intact — including all the "begets" — and virtuoso drawing.

» EXPRESS: That's interesting, because you've said many times that the only growth in book sales in recent years has come, in blue states, from graphic novels and, in red states, from religious books.
» SPIEGELMAN: I was thinking that someone should put the two together. That's true. Very shrewd marketer, Robert Crumb (laughs). Well, he was very important to me. He seemed like the great synthesizer. We were talking about it before, that ambitiousness in comics that started happening: It really goes toward the moment that Crumb entered the scene. An incredibly virtuoso cartoonist and one single-mindedly interested in the way that he sees the world, which gives him a real voice.

» EXPRESS: What are the proudest moments of your career?
» SPIEGELMAN: We've probably touched on them. I'm very proud of my early apprentice years at Topps Bubblegum. And although the phrase "graphic novelist" leaves me jaundiced, the work that became "Maus" represents a 13-year project, at least. I'm certainly proud of it. It remains in print and seems to have entered some version of a canon. Raw magazine, equally, in that I think Francois and I were able to identify and show and help create a new generation of cartoonists who were trying to push at the panel borders.

» EXPRESS: What cartoonists would you recommend to your fans?
» SPIEGELMAN: Chris Ware — his understanding of what comics can be is about as sophisticated as any artist working in any medium anywhere. Dan Clowes is high up there. I also really love Kim Deitch and Gary Panter, who's the only cartoonist whose work actually makes me want to pick up a pen and draw.

Crumb would be on that list and Lynda Barry is up there. But I tend to look at older work. I still take deep pleasure from the comic strips of the early part of the century, ranging from "Little Nemo" and "Krazy Kat" to "Dick Tracy" and "Little Orphan Annie."

» EXPRESS: Why do you think you keep returning to those?
» SPIEGELMAN: I think they have an absolute bedrock solidity that keeps on giving and, very often, when we're talking about that road where art and commerce actually travel together, they actually manage to make something, to my mind and eye, function as art.

» Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW; Mon., May 4, 7 p.m., $20;
202-639-1700. (Farragut West, Farragut North)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photo courtesy Nadja Spiegelman