Art Spiegelman.

• Author: Siegal, Nina
• Position: The Progressive Interview - Writer and illustrator - Interview

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and illustrator Art Spiegelman, the man who made the comic book legit, has lived most of his life in New York. But he was born in Stockholm to parents who were both Holocaust survivors. He moved to Rego Park, New York, as a young boy. Although his parents wanted him to be a dentist, he was already drawing obsessively as a teenager and took his first art classes in high school. By sixteen, he was working as a professional artist.

He studied art and philosophy at Harpur College and later became a creative consultant for Topps Candy, designing Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids, and other novelty items. In 1980, Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly, founded RAW, a large-format graphic magazine that featured strips by underground comic artists such as Chris Ware, Mark Beyer, and Dan Clowes. In his contributions for RAW (subtitled Open Wounds from the Cutting Edge of Commix), Spiegelman experimented with drawing and narrative styles, producing strips that helped create an avantgarde of comic art.

During that time, he was also working on a graphic novel based on his parents' experiences during the Holocaust, and their later life in America. In this novel, Maus, published in two parts, he subverted the traditional use of comics--making funnies--to tell a tragic tale, portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Writing and drawing the book took thirteen years. It won Spiegelman the Pulitzer Prize in 1992--the first time a comic novel had won the prestigious award.

In 1993, Spiegelman became a staff artist and writer for The New Yorker, contributing some of the magazine's most memorable cover art, including the black-on-black depiction of the Twin Towers that ran on the magazine's front cover just after September 11. He also collaborated with his wife, who is The New Yorker's art director, on books for children, including Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies, and Strange Stories for Strange Kids.

On September 11, 2001, he was in his home in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks away from the Twin Towers. He and Francoise ran to collect their son, Dashell, and their daughter, Nadja, who had just started the fall semester at Stuyvesant High School near Ground Zero. He saw the towers' unearthly glow just moments before they disintegrated.

He describes these experiences in his new book, In the Shadow of No Towers, which gathers together strips he drew mostly for European periodicals. It begins with the words, "I tend to be easily unhinged," and it explores Spiegelman's own frantic attempts to understand the events of that day and its aftermath. "Doomed, doomed to drag this damn albatross around my neck, and compulsively retell the calamities of September 11th to anyone who'll listen," he writes. Struggling to portray his own consciousness, he draws himself variously as a character from Maus and as classic cartoon figures from comics such as Happy Hooligan, Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Bringing Up Father.

A couple of weeks before the November election, Spiegelman was seated on a plush couch in the lobby of the Swissotel in downtown Chicago, chain-smoking and throwing back cups of coffee as if they were vitamins.

He talked to The Progressive about his new book, the politics of publishing, media censorship, his own drawing process, and the history of comic art. After the elections, I got back in touch with him.

Q: What was your reaction to Bush's...