Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman ( ; born February 15, 1948), professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''
Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''
Arcade'' and ''
Raw'' has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
''. He is married to designer and editor
Françoise Mouly and is the father of writer
Nadja Spiegelman. In September 2022, the
National Book Foundation announced that he would receive the
Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Spiegelman began his career with
Topps
The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures trading cards and other collectibles. Formerly based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of Baseball card, baseball and other sports and Non-sports tradi ...
(a bubblegum and
trading card
A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other t ...
company) in the mid-1960s, which was his main financial support for two decades; there he co-created parodic series such as ''
Wacky Packages'' in the 1960s and ''
Garbage Pail Kids'' in the 1980s. He gained prominence in the
underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...
scene in the 1970s with short, experimental, and often autobiographical work. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection ''
Breakdowns'' in 1977, after which Spiegelman turned focus to the book-length ''
Maus'', about his relationship with his father, a
Holocaust survivor. The postmodern book depicts Germans as cats, Jews as mice, ethnic Poles as pigs, and citizens of the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
as dogs. It took 13 years to create until its completion in 1991. In 1992 it won a special
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
and has gained a reputation as a pivotal work.
Spiegelman and Mouly edited eleven issues of ''Raw'' from 1980 to 1991. The oversized and graphics magazine helped introduce talents who became prominent in
alternative comics
Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comic book, American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alterna ...
, such as
Charles Burns,
Chris Ware, and
Ben Katchor, and introduced several foreign cartoonists to the English-speaking comics world. Beginning in the 1990s, the couple worked for ''The New Yorker'', which Spiegelman left to work on ''
In the Shadow of No Towers'' (2004), about his reaction to the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
in New York in 2001.
Spiegelman advocates for greater comics literacy. As an editor, a teacher, and a lecturer, Spiegelman has promoted better understanding of comics and has mentored younger cartoonists.
Family history

Spiegelman's parents were
Polish Jews
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jews, Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long pe ...
(1906–1982) and (1912–1968) Spiegelman. His father was born Zeev Spiegelman, with the Hebrew name Zeev ben Avraham. Władysław was his Polish name, and Władek (or Vladek in
anglicized form) was a diminutive of this name. He was also known as Wilhelm under
the German occupation, and Anglicized his name to William upon immigration to the United States. His mother was born Andzia Zylberberg, with the Hebrew name Hannah. She changed her name to Anna upon immigrating to the United States. In Spiegelman's ''
Maus'', from which the couple are best known, Spiegelman used the spellings "Vladek" and "Anja", which he believed would be easier for Americans to pronounce. The surname ''Spiegelman'' is German for "mirror man".
In 1937, the Spiegelmans had one other son, Rysio (spelled "Richieu" in ''Maus''), who died before Art was born, at the age of five or six. During the Holocaust, Spiegelman's parents sent Rysio to
Zawiercie to stay with an aunt, Tosha, with whom they believed he would be safe. In 1943, the aunt poisoned herself, along with Rysio and two other young family members in her care, so that the
Nazis
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
could not take them to the
extermination camps. After the war, the Spiegelmans, unable to accept that Rysio was dead, searched orphanages all over Europe in the hope of finding him. Spiegelman talked of having a sort of
sibling rivalry with his "ghost brother"; he felt unable to compete with an "ideal" brother who "never threw tantrums or got in any kind of trouble". Of 85 Spiegelman relatives alive at the beginning of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, only 13 are known to have survived the Holocaust.
Life and career
Early life
He began cartooning in 1960 and imitated the style of his favorite
comic book
A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...
s, such as ''
Mad''. In the early 1960s, he contributed to early
fanzine
A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleas ...
s such as ''Smudge'' and
Skip Williamson's ''Squire'', and in 1962—while at Russell Sage Junior High School in
Forest Hills, Queens, where he was an
honors student—he produced the ''Mad''-inspired fanzine ''Blasé''. He was earning money from his drawing by the time he reached high school and sold artwork to the original ''
Long Island Press'' and other outlets. His talent caught the eyes of
United Features Syndicate, who offered him the chance to produce a
syndicated comic strip. Dedicated to the idea of art as expression, he turned down this commercial opportunity. He attended the
High School of Art and Design in Manhattan beginning in 1963. He met
Woody Gelman, the art director of
Topps Chewing Gum Company, who encouraged Spiegelman to apply to Topps after graduating from high school. At age 15, Spiegelman received payment for his work from a Rego Park newspaper.
After he graduated in 1965, Spiegelman's parents urged him to pursue the financial security of a career such as dentistry, but he chose instead to enroll at
Harpur College to study art and philosophy. While there, he got a freelance art job at Topps, which provided him with an income for the next two decades.

Spiegelman attended Harpur College from 1965 until 1968, where he worked as staff cartoonist for the college newspaper and edited a college humor magazine. After a summer internship when he was 18, Topps hired him for Gelman's Product Development Department as a creative consultant making
trading cards
A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other t ...
and related products in 1966, such as the ''
Wacky Packages'' series of
parodic trading cards begun in 1967.
Spiegelman began selling self-published
underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, ...
on street corners in 1966. He had cartoons published in underground publications such as the ''
East Village Other'' and traveled to San Francisco for a few months in 1967, where the underground comix scene was just beginning to burgeon.
In late winter 1968, Spiegelman suffered an intense
nervous breakdown
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
, which cut short his university studies. He has said that at the time he was taking
LSD with great frequency. He spent a month in
Binghamton State Mental Hospital, and shortly after he exited it, his mother died by
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...
following the death of her only surviving brother.
Underground comics (1971–1977)
In 1971, after several visits, Spiegelman moved to
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
and became a part of the
countercultural underground comix movement that had been developing there. Some of the he produced during this period include ''The Compleat Mr. Infinity'' (1970), a ten-page booklet of explicit comic strips, and ''The Viper Vicar of Vice, Villainy and Vickedness'' (1972), a
transgressive work in the vein of fellow underground cartoonist
S. Clay Wilson. Spiegelman's work also appeared in underground magazines such as ''
Gothic Blimp Works'', ''
Bijou Funnies'', ''
Young Lust'', ''Real Pulp'', and ''Bizarre Sex'', and were in a variety of styles and genres as Spiegelman sought his
artistic voice. He also did a number of cartoons for
men's magazines
This is a list of men's magazines from around the world. These are Magazine, magazines (periodical print publications) that have been published primarily for a readership of Man, men.
The list has been split into subcategories according to the t ...
such as ''
Cavalier
The term ''Cavalier'' () was first used by Roundheads as a term of abuse for the wealthier royalist supporters of Charles I of England and his son Charles II of England, Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum (England), Int ...
'', ''
The Dude'', and ''
Gent''.
In 1972,
Justin Green asked Spiegelman to do a three-page strip for the first issue of ''Funny '' . He wanted to do one about racism, and at first considered a story with African Americans as mice and cats taking on the role of the
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
. Instead, he turned to the Holocaust that his parents had survived. He titled the strip "Maus" and depicted the Jews as mice persecuted by ''die Katzen'', which were Nazis as cats. The narrator related the story to a mouse named "
Mickey". With this story Spiegelman felt he had found his voice.
Seeing Green's revealingly autobiographical ''
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary'' while in-progress in 1971 inspired Spiegelman to produce "Prisoner on the Hell Planet", an expressionistic work that dealt with his mother's suicide; it appeared in 1973 in ''Short Order Comix'' 1, which he edited. Spiegelman's work thereafter went through a phase of increasing formal experimentation; the ''Apex Treasury of Underground Comics'' in 1974 quotes him: "As an art form the comic strip is barely in its infancy. So am I. Maybe we'll grow up together." The often-reprinted "Ace Hole, Midget Detective" of 1974 was a
Cubist-style
nonlinear parody of
hardboiled crime fiction full of
non sequiturs. "A Day at the Circuits" of 1975 is a recursive single-page strip about alcoholism and depression in which the reader follows the character through multiple never-ending pathways. "Nervous Rex: The Malpractice Suite" of 1976 is made up of cut-out panels from the soap-opera comic strip ''
Rex Morgan, M.D.'' refashioned in such a way as to defy coherence.
In 1973, Spiegelman edited a
pornographic and
psychedelic book of quotations and dedicated it to his mother. Co-edited with Bob Schneider, it was called ''Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations''. In 1974–1975, he taught a studio cartooning class at the
San Francisco Academy of Art.
By the mid-1970s, the underground comix movement was encountering a slowdown. To give cartoonists a safe berth, Spiegelman co-edited the anthology ''
Arcade'' with
Bill Griffith
William Henry Jackson Griffith (born January 20, 1944) is an American cartoonist who signs his work Bill Griffith and Griffy. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip '' Zippy''. The catchphrase "Are we having fun yet?" is credited t ...
, in 1975 and 1976. ''Arcade'' was printed by
The Print Mint and lasted seven issues, five of which had covers by
Robert Crumb. It stood out from similar publications by having an editorial plan, in which Spiegelman and Griffith attempt to show how comics connect to the broader realms of artistic and literary culture. Spiegelman's own work in ''Arcade'' tended to be short and concerned with formal experimentation. ''Arcade'' also introduced art from ages past, as well as contemporary literary pieces by writers such as
William S. Burroughs and
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...
. In 1975, Spiegelman moved back to New York City, which put most of the editorial work for ''Arcade'' on the shoulders of Griffith and his cartoonist wife,
Diane Noomin. This, combined with distribution problems and retailer indifference, led to the magazine's 1976 demise. Spiegelman swore he would never edit another magazine.
Françoise Mouly, an architectural student on a hiatus from her studies at the
Beaux-Arts in Paris, arrived in New York in 1974. While looking for comics from which to practice reading English, she came across ''Arcade''. Avant-garde filmmaker friend
Ken Jacobs introduced Mouly and Spiegelman, when Spiegelman was visiting, but they did not immediately develop a mutual interest. Spiegelman moved back to New York later in the year. Occasionally the two ran across each other. After she read "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" Mouly felt the urge to contact him. An eight-hour phone call led to a deepening of their relationship. Spiegelman followed her to France when she had to return to fulfill obligations in her architecture course.
Spiegelman introduced Mouly to the world of comics and helped her find work as a
colorist for
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is a New York City–based comic book publishing, publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin G ...
. After returning to the U.S. in 1977, Mouly ran into visa problems, which the couple solved by getting married. The couple began to make yearly trips to Europe to explore the comics scene, and brought back European comics to show to their circle of friends. Mouly assisted in putting together the lavish, oversized collection of Spiegelman's experimental strips ''
Breakdowns'' in 1977.
''Raw'' and ''Maus'' (1978–1991)

''Breakdowns'' suffered poor distribution and sales, and 30% of the print run was unusable due to printing errors, an experience that motivated Mouly to gain control over the printing process. She took courses in
offset printing and bought a printing press for her loft, on which she was to print parts of a new magazine she insisted on launching with Spiegelman. With Mouly as publisher, Spiegelman and Mouly co-edited ''
Raw'' starting in July 1980. The first issue was subtitled "The Graphix Magazine of Postponed Suicides". While it included work from such established underground cartoonists as Crumb and Griffith, ''Raw'' focused on publishing artists who were virtually unknown, avant-garde cartoonists such as
Charles Burns,
Lynda Barry,
Chris Ware,
Ben Katchor, and
Gary Panter, and introduced English-speaking audiences to translations of foreign works by
José Muñoz,
Chéri Samba,
Joost Swarte,
Yoshiharu Tsuge,
Jacques Tardi, and others.
With the intention of creating a book-length work based on his father's recollections of the Holocaust Spiegelman began to interview his father again in 1978 and made a research visit in 1979 to the
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...
, where his parents had been imprisoned by the
Nazis
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
. The book, ''Maus'', appeared one chapter at a time as an insert in ''Raw'' beginning with the second issue in December 1980. Spiegelman's father did not live to see its completion; he died on 18 August 1982. Spiegelman learned in 1985 that
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...
was producing an animated film about Jewish mice who escape persecution in Eastern Europe by fleeing to the United States. Spiegelman was sure the film, ''
An American Tail'' (1986), was inspired by ''Maus'' and became eager to have his unfinished book come out before the movie to avoid comparisons. He struggled to find a publisher until in 1986, after the publication in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' of a rave review of the work-in-progress,
Pantheon agreed to release a collection of the first six chapters. The volume was titled ''Maus: A Survivor's Tale'' and subtitled ''My Father Bleeds History''. The book found a large audience, in part because it was sold in bookstores rather than in
direct-market comic shops, which by the 1980s had become the dominant outlet for comic books.

Spiegelman began teaching at the
School of Visual Arts in New York in 1978, and continued until 1987, teaching alongside his heroes
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman (; October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and editor. His best-known work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book ''Mad (magazine), Mad'' from 1952 until 1956, and writing the ...
and
Will Eisner. ": An Idiosyncratic Historical and Aesthetic Overview", a Spiegelman essay, was published in ''
Print''. Another Spiegelman essay, "High Art Lowdown", was published in ''
Artforum'' in 1990, critiquing the ''High/Low'' exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
.
In the wake of the success of the
Cabbage Patch Kids series of dolls, Spiegelman created the parodic trading card series ''
Garbage Pail Kids'' for Topps in 1985. Similar to the ''Wacky Packages'' series, the
gross-out factor of the cards was controversial with parent groups, and its popularity started a gross-out fad among children. Spiegelman called Topps his "
Medici" for the autonomy and financial freedom working for the company had given him. The relationship was nevertheless strained over issues of credit and ownership of the original artwork. In 1989 Topps auctioned off pieces of art Spiegelman had created rather than returning them to him, and Spiegelman broke the relation. In 1990, he received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
for Fine Arts.
In 1991, ''Raw'' 2, 3 was published; it was to be the last issue. The closing chapter of ''Maus'' appeared not in ''Raw'' but in the second volume of the graphic novel, which appeared later that year with the subtitle ''And Here My Troubles Began''. ''Maus'' attracted an unprecedented amount of critical attention for a work of comics, including an exhibition at New York's
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
and a
special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.
''The New Yorker'' and public legitimacy (1992–2001)

Hired by
Tina Brown as a contributing artist in 1992, Spiegelman worked for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' for ten years. His first cover appeared on the February 15, 1993, Valentine's Day issue and showed a black
West Indian woman and a
Hasidic man kissing. The cover caused turmoil at ''The New Yorker'' offices. Spiegelman intended it to reference the
Crown Heights riot of 1991 in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish
yeshiva
A yeshiva (; ; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are studied in parallel. The stu ...
student. Twenty-one ''New Yorker'' covers by Spiegelman were published, and he also submitted some which were rejected for being too outrageous.
Within ''The New Yorker''s pages, Spiegelman contributed strips such as a collaboration, "In the Dumps", with children's illustrator
Maurice Sendak and an obituary to
Charles M. Schulz, "Abstract Thought is a Warm Puppy". Another of Spiegelman's essays, "Forms Stretched to their Limits", in an issue was about
Jack Cole, the creator of
Plastic Man
Plastic Man (Patrick "Eel" O'Brian) is a superhero featured in American comic books first appearing in ''Police Comics'' #1, originally published by Quality Comics and later acquired by DC Comics. Created by cartoonist Jack Cole (artist), Jack Co ...
. It formed the basis for a book about Cole, ''Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits'' (2001).
The same year, Voyager Company published ''The Complete Maus'', a CD-ROM version of ''Maus'' with extensive supplementary material, and Spiegelman illustrated a 1923 poem by
Joseph Moncure March called ''
The Wild Party''. Spiegelman contributed the essay "Getting in Touch With My Inner Racist" in the September 1, 1997, issue of ''
Mother Jones''.
Spiegelman was comics editor of the ''
New York Press
''New York Press'' was a free alternative weekly in New York City, which was published from 1988 to 2011.
The ''Press'' strove to create a rivalry with the ''Village Voice''. ''Press'' editors claimed to have tried to hire away writer Nat Hento ...
'' in the early 1990s.
He was comics editor of ''
Details'' magazine in the late 1990s;
[McGee, Kathleen]
"SPIEGELMAN SPEAKS: Art Spiegelman is the author of Maus for which he won a special Pulitzer in 1992. Kathleen McGee interviewed him when he visited Minneapolis in 1998,"
''Conduit'' (1998). in 1997 he began assigning
comics journalism pieces in ''Details'' to a number of his cartoonist associates, including
Joe Sacco,
Peter Kuper,
Ben Katchor,
Peter Bagge,
Charles Burns,
Kaz,
Kim Deitch, and
Jay Lynch. The magazine published these works of journalism in comics form throughout 1998 and 1999, helping to legitimize the form in popular perception.
[Mackay, Brad. "Behind the rise of investigative cartooning," ''THIS Magazine'' (Jan. 2008)]
Archived at Ad Astra Comix

Spiegelman's influence and connections in New York cartooning circles drew the ire of political cartoonist
Ted Rall in 1999. In "The King of Comix",
[Rall, Ted]
"The King of Comix: With Raw, a Pulitzer Prize For Maus, and a Strategic Job at The New Yorker, Art Spiegelman Has Become Lord of All New York Cartoonists. But His Power Is No Laughing Matter,"
''The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...
'', July 27, 1999. an article in ''
The Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture publication based in Greenwich Village, New York City, known for being the country's first Alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, ...
'', Rall accused Spiegelman of the power to "make or break" a cartoonist's career in New York, while denigrating Spiegelman as "a guy with one great book in him". Cartoonist
Danny Hellman responded by sending a forged email under Rall's name to 30 professionals; the prank escalated until Rall launched a defamation suit against Hellman for $1.5 million. Hellman published a "Legal Action Comics" benefit book to cover his legal costs, to which Spiegelman contributed a back-cover cartoon in which he relieves himself on a Rall-shaped urinal.
In 1997, Spiegelman had his first children's book published, ''Open Me...I'm a Dog'', with a narrator who tries to convince its readers that it is a dog via pop-ups and an attached leash. From 2000 to 2003, Spiegelman and Mouly edited three issues of the children's comics anthology ''
Little Lit'', with contributions from ''Raw'' alumni and children's book authors and illustrators.
Post–September 11 (2001–present)
Spiegelman lived close to the
World Trade Center site, which was known as "Ground Zero" after the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
that destroyed the
World Trade Center. Immediately following the attacks Spiegelman and Mouly rushed to their daughter Nadja's school, where Spiegelman's anxiety served only to increase his daughter's apprehensiveness over the situation. Spiegelman and Mouly created a cover for the September 24 issue of ''The New Yorker'' which at first glance appears to be totally black, but upon close examination it reveals the silhouettes of the
World Trade Center towers in a slightly darker shade of black. Mouly positioned the silhouettes so that the North Tower's antenna breaks into the "w" of ''The New Yorker''s logo. The towers were printed in black on a slightly darker black field employing standard four-color printing inks with an overprinted clear varnish. In some situations, the ghost images only became visible when the magazine was tilted toward a light source. Spiegelman was critical of the Bush administration and the mass media over their handling of the September 11 attacks.
Spiegelman did not renew his ''New Yorker'' contract after 2003. He later quipped that he regretted leaving when he did, as he could have left in protest when the magazine ran a pro-
invasion of Iraq piece later in the year. Spiegelman said his parting from ''The New Yorker'' was part of his general disappointment with "the widespread conformism of the mass media in the
Bush era". He said he felt like he was in "internal exile" following the September 11 attacks as the U.S. media had become "conservative and timid" and did not welcome the provocative art that he felt the need to create. Nevertheless, Spiegelman asserted he left not over political differences, as had been widely reported, but because ''The New Yorker'' was not interested in doing serialized work, which he wanted to do with his next project.
Spiegelman responded to the September 11 attacks with ''
In the Shadow of No Towers'', commissioned by German newspaper , where it appeared throughout 2003. ''
The Jewish Daily Forward'' was the only American periodical to serialize the feature. ''In the Shadow of No Towers'' is an autobiographical reflection on the tragic events and a partial
political satire
Political satire is a type of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics. Political satire can also act as a tool for advancing political arguments in conditions where political speech and dissent are banned.
Political satir ...
on the
War on Terror. The collected work appeared in September 2004 as an oversized
board book of two-page spreads which had to be turned on end to read.
In the June 2006 edition of ''
Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. ''Harper's Magazine'' has ...
'' Spiegelman had an article published on the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy; some interpretations of Islamic law prohibit the
depiction of Muhammad. The Canadian chain of booksellers
Indigo
InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...
refused to sell the issue. Called "Drawing Blood: Outrageous Cartoons and the Art of Outrage", the article surveyed the sometimes dire effect political cartooning has for its creators, ranging from
Honoré Daumier
Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808 – February 10 or 11, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the July Revolution, Revolution of 1830 ...
, who spent time in prison for his satirical work; to
George Grosz, who faced exile. To Indigo the article seemed to promote the continuance of racial caricature. An internal memo advised Indigo staff to tell people: "the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world." In response to the cartoons, Iranian president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...
promoted an Iranian
cartoon contest seeking anti-Semitic cartoons. The organizers of the contest intended to highlight what they perceived as Western double standards surrounding anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Spiegelman produced a cartoon of a line of prisoners being led to the gas chambers; one stops to look at the corpses around him and says, "Ha! Ha! Ha! What's really hilarious is that none of this is actually happening!"
To promote literacy in young children, Mouly encouraged publishers to publish comics for children. Disappointed by publishers' lack of response, from 2008 she self-published a line of easy readers called
Toon Books, by artists such as Spiegelman,
Renée French
Renée French (born 1963) is an American comics writer and illustrator and, under the pen name Rainy Dohaney, a children's literature, children's book author, and exhibiting artist.
Her work is characterized by her "obsessive-looking and highly ...
, and
Rutu Modan, and promotes the books to teachers and librarians for their educational value. Spiegelman's ''Jack and the Box'' was one of the inaugural books in 2008.
In 2008 Spiegelman reissued ''Breakdowns'' in an expanded edition including "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" an autobiographical strip that had been serialized in the ''
Virginia Quarterly Review'' from 2005. A volume drawn from Spiegelman's sketchbooks, ''Be A Nose'', appeared in 2009. In 2011, ''
MetaMaus'' followed—a book-length analysis of ''Maus'' by Spiegelman and
Hillary Chute with a DVD update of the earlier CD-ROM.
Library of America commissioned Spiegelman to edit the two-volume ''
Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts'', which appeared in 2010, collecting all of Ward's
wordless novels with an introduction and annotations by Spiegelman. The project led to a touring show in 2014 about wordless novels called ''Wordless!'' with live music by saxophonist
Phillip Johnston. ''Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective'' débuted at Angoulême in 2012 and by the end of 2014 had traveled to Paris, Cologne, Vancouver, New York, and Toronto. The book ''Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps'', which complemented the show, appeared in 2013.
In 2015, after six writers refused to sit on a panel at the
PEN American Center in protest of the planned "freedom of expression courage award" for the satirical French periodical ''
Charlie Hebdo
''Charlie Hebdo'' (; ) is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian, and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism ...
'' following the
shooting at its headquarters earlier in the year, Spiegelman agreed to be one of the replacement hosts, along with other names in comics such as writer
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays. His works include the comic series ''The Sandman (comic book), The Sandma ...
. Spiegelman retracted a cover he had submitted to a Gaiman-edited "saying the unsayable" issue of ''
New Statesman
''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...
'' when the management declined to print a strip of Spiegelman's. The strip, "Notes from a First Amendment Fundamentalist", depicts Muhammad, and Spiegelman believed the rejection was censorship, though the magazine asserted it never intended to run the cartoon.
During the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, Spiegelman worked on illustrating ''Street Cop'', a dystopian short novel written by
Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover (February 4, 1932 – October 5, 2024) was an American novelist, Short story, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation ...
. Published in 2021, it tells the story of a crooked cop trying to solve a murder.
A biographical documentary called ''
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse'' premiered at
DOC NYC in November 2024
and was released in theaters in 2025.
The documentary covers the role that tragedy has played in inspiring Spiegelman's work, including the Holocaust, his mother's suicide, and the September 11 attacks.
At a Q&A session after the screening, Spiegelman announced that he is working on a graphic novel about
Gaza with
Joe Sacco.
He later clarified that the project wouldn't be a full graphic novel but a three-page comic based on phone conversations the two had had. The collaborative comic called "Never Again and Again" was released in February 2025 in ''
The New York Review''.
Personal life
Spiegelman married
Françoise Mouly on July 12, 1977, in a New York city hall ceremony. They remarried later in the year after Mouly
converted to Judaism
Conversion to Judaism ( or ) is the process by which non-Jews adopt the Jewish religion and become members of the Jewish ethnoreligious community. It thus resembles both conversion to other religions and naturalization. "Thus, by convertin ...
to please Spiegelman's father. Mouly and Spiegelman have two children together: a daughter,
Nadja Rachel, born in 1987, and a son, Dashiell Alan, born in 1992.
Style
Spiegelman suffers from a
lazy eye, and thus lacks
depth perception
Depth perception is the ability to perceive distance to objects in the world using the visual system and visual perception. It is a major factor in perceiving the world in three dimensions.
Depth sensation is the corresponding term for non-hum ...
. He says his art style is "really a result of
isdeficiencies". His is a style of labored simplicity, with dense visual motifs which often go unnoticed upon first viewing. He sees comics as "very condensed thought structures", more akin to poetry than prose, which need careful, time-consuming planning that their seeming simplicity belies. Spiegelman's work prominently displays his concern with form, and pushing the boundaries of what is and is not comics. Early in the underground comix era, Spiegelman proclaimed to Robert Crumb, "Time is an illusion that can be shattered in comics! Showing the same scene from different angles freezes it in time by turning the page into a diagram—an
orthographic projection
Orthographic projection (also orthogonal projection and analemma) is a means of representing Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional objects in Plane (mathematics), two dimensions. Orthographic projection is a form of parallel projection in ...
!" His comics experiment with time, space,
recursion
Recursion occurs when the definition of a concept or process depends on a simpler or previous version of itself. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in m ...
, and representation. He uses the word "decode" to express the action of reading comics and sees comics as functioning best when expressed as diagrams, icons, or symbols.
Spiegelman has stated he does not see himself primarily as a visual artist, one who instinctively sketches or doodles. He has said he approaches his work as a writer as he lacks confidence in his graphic skills. He subjects his dialogue and visuals to constant revision—he reworked some dialogue balloons in ''Maus'' up to forty times. A critic in ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'' compared Spiegelman's dialogue writing to a young
Philip Roth in his ability "to make the Jewish speech of several generations sound fresh and convincing".
Spiegelman makes use of both old- and new-fashioned tools in his work. He prefers at times to work on paper on a drafting table, while at others he draws directly onto his computer using a
digital pen and electronic drawing tablet, or mixes methods, employing scanners and printers.
Influences
Harvey Kurtzman has been Spiegelman's strongest influence as a cartoonist, editor, and promoter of new talent. Chief among his other early cartooning influences include Will Eisner,
John Stanley's version of ''
Little Lulu'',
Winsor McCay's ''
Little Nemo'',
George Herriman's ''
Krazy Kat'', and
Bernard Krigstein's short strip "".
In the 1960s Spiegelman read in comics
fanzine
A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleas ...
s about graphic artists such as
Frans Masereel, who had made
wordless novels in
woodcut. The discussions in those fanzines about making the
Great American Novel
The "Great American Novel" (sometimes abbreviated as GAN) is the term for a Western Canon, canonical novel that generally embodies and examines the essence and Culture of the United States, character of the United States. The term was coined b ...
in comics later acted as inspiration for him.
Justin Green's comic book ''
Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary'' (1972) motivated Spiegelman to open up and include autobiographical elements in his comics.
Spiegelman acknowledges
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
as an early influence, whom he says he has read since the age of 12, and lists
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...
,
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...
, and
Gertrude Stein among the writers whose work "stayed with" him. He cites non-narrative avant-garde filmmakers from whom he has drawn heavily, including
Ken Jacobs,
Stan Brakhage, and
Ernie Gehr, and other filmmakers such as
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...
and the makers of ''
The Twilight Zone''.
Beliefs
Spiegelman is a prominent advocate for the comics medium and comics literacy. He believes the medium echoes the way the human brain processes information. He has toured the U.S. with a lecture called "Comix 101", examining its history and cultural importance. He sees comics' low status in the late 20th century as having come down from where it was in the 1930s and 1940s, when comics "tended to appeal to an older audience of
GIs and other adults". Following the advent of the censorious
Comics Code Authority
The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed in 1954 by the Comics Magazine Association of America as an alternative to government regulation. The CCA enabled comic publishers to self-regulate the content of American comic book, comic books in the ...
in the mid-1950s, Spiegelman sees comics' potential as having stagnated until the rise of underground comix in the late 1960s. He taught courses in the history and aesthetics of comics at schools such as the School of Visual Arts in New York. As co-editor of ''Raw'', he helped propel the careers of younger cartoonists whom he mentored, such as Chris Ware, and published the work of his School of Visual Arts students, such as
Kaz,
Drew Friedman, and
Mark Newgarden. Some of the work published in ''Raw'' was originally turned in as class assignments.
Spiegelman has described himself politically as "firmly on the left side of the secular-fundamentalist divide" and a "
1st Amendment absolutist". As a supporter of
free speech, Spiegelman is opposed to
hate speech
Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as ...
laws. He wrote a critique in ''Harper's'' on the
controversial Muhammad cartoons in the ''Jyllands-Posten'' in 2006; the issue was banned from
Indigo
InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...
–
Chapters stores in Canada. Spiegelman criticized American media for refusing to reprint the cartoons they reported on at the time of the ''Charlie Hebdo'' shooting in 2015.
Spiegelman is a non-practicing Jew and considers himself "a-Zionist"—neither pro- nor anti-
Zionist
Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
; he has called
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
"a sad, failed idea". He told ''
Peanuts'' creator
Charles Schulz he was not religious, but identified with the "alienated
diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...
culture of
Kafka and
Freud ... what
Stalin pejoratively called
rootless cosmopolitanism".
Legacy
''Maus'' looms large not only over Spiegelman's body of work, but over the comics medium itself. While Spiegelman was far from the first to do autobiography in comics, critics such as
James Campbell considered ''Maus'' the work that popularized it. The bestseller has been widely written about in the popular press and academia—the quantity of its critical literature far outstrips that of any other work of comics. It has been examined from a great variety of academic viewpoints, though most often by those with little understanding of ''Maus'' context in the history of comics. While ''Maus'' has been credited with lifting comics from popular culture into the world of high art in the public imagination, criticism has tended to ignore its deep roots in popular culture, roots that Spiegelman has intimate familiarity with and has devoted considerable time to promote.
Spiegelman's belief that comics are best expressed in a diagrammatic or iconic manner has had a particular influence on formalists such as
Chris Ware and his former student
Scott McCloud. In 2005, the September 11-themed ''New Yorker'' cover placed sixth on the top ten of magazine covers of the previous 40 years by the
American Society of Magazine Editors. Spiegelman has inspired numerous cartoonists to take up the graphic novel as a means of expression, including
Marjane Satrapi
Marjane Satrapi (; ; born 22 November 1969) is a French-Iranian graphic novelist, cartoonist, illustrator, film director, and children's book author. Her best-known works include the graphic novel ''Persepolis (comics), Persepolis'' and Persepo ...
.
A joint
ZDF–
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
documentary, ''Art Spiegelman's Maus'', was televised in 1987. Spiegelman, Mouly, and many of the ''Raw'' artists appeared in the documentary ''
Comic Book Confidential'' in 1988. Spiegelman's comics career was also covered in an Emmy-nominated PBS documentary, ''Serious Comics: Art Spiegelman'', produced by Patricia Zur for WNYC-TV in 1994. Spiegelman played himself in the 2007 episode "
Husbands and Knives" of the animated television series ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
'' with fellow comics creators
Daniel Clowes and
Alan Moore
Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books including ''Watchmen'', ''V for Vendetta'', ''The Ballad of Halo Jones'', Swamp Thing (comic book), ''Swamp Thing'', ''Batman: The Killing Joke' ...
. A European documentary, ''Art Spiegelman, Traits de Mémoire'', appeared in 2010 and later in English under the title ''The Art of Spiegelman'', directed by Clara Kuperberg and Joelle Oosterlinck and mainly featuring interviews with Spiegelman and those around him.
Awards

* 1982: Playboy Editorial Award, Best Comic Strip
* 1982:
Yellow Kid Award,
Lucca, Italy, for Foreign Author
* 1983: ''
Print'', Regional Design Award
* 1984: ''
Print'', Regional Design Award
* 1985: ''
Print'', Regional Design Award
* 1986: Joel M. Cavior, Jewish Writing
* 1987:
Inkpot Award
* 1988:
Angoulême International Comics Festival
The Angoulême International Comics Festival (AICF; ) is the second largest comics festival in Europe after the Lucca Comics & Games in Italy, and the third biggest in the world after Lucca Comics & Games and the Comiket of Japan. It has occur ...
, France,
Prize for Best Comic Book, for ''Maus''
* 1988:
Urhunden Prize, Sweden, Best Foreign Album, for ''Maus''
* 1990:
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
.
* 1990:
Max & Moritz Prize,
Erlangen
Erlangen (; , ) is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 119,810 inhabitants (as of 30 September 2024), it is the smalle ...
, Germany,
Special Prize, for ''Maus''
* 1992:
Pulitzer Prize Letters award, for ''Maus''
* 1992:
Eisner Award,
Best Graphic Album (reprint), for ''Maus''
* 1992:
Harvey Award
The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be a successor to the Kirby Awards, which were ...
,
Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work, for ''Maus''
* 1992: ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', Book Prize for Fiction for ''Maus II''
* 1993: Angoulême International Comics Festival,
Prize for Best Comic Book, for ''Maus II''
* 1993:
Sproing Award, Norway, Best Foreign Album, for ''Maus''
* 1993: Urhunden Prize, Best Foreign Album, for ''Maus II''
* 1995:
Binghamton University
The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public university, public research university in Binghamton metropolitan area, Greater Binghamton, New York, United States. It is one of the four uni ...
(formerly Harpur College), honorary
Doctorate of Letters.
* 1999: Eisner Award, inducted into the
Hall of Fame
* 2005: French government, Chevalier of the
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Order of Arts and Letters () is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant ...
* 2005: ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' magazine, one of the "
Top 100 Most Influential People"
* 2011: Angoulême International Comics Festival,
Grand Prix
*2011:
National Jewish Book Award for MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus
* 2015:
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
membership
*2018: The
Edward MacDowell Medal
*2020: The
Great Immigrants Award by the
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Bibliography
Author
* ''Tijuana Bibles: Art and Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930s-1950s (Introductory Essay: Those Dirty Little Comics)'' (1977)
*''
Breakdowns: From Maus to Now, an Anthology of Strips'' (1977)
* ''
Maus'' (1991)
* ''The Wild Party'' (1994)
* ''Open Me, I'm A Dog'' (1995)
* ''Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits'' (2001)
* ''
In the Shadow of No Towers'' (2004)
* ''
Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!'' (2008)
* ''Jack and the Box'' (2008)
* ''Be a Nose'' (2009)
* ''
MetaMaus'' (2011)
* ''Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps'' (2013)
* ''Street Cop'' (with
Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover (February 4, 1932 – October 5, 2024) was an American novelist, Short story, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation ...
) (2021)
''The St. Louis Refugee Ship Blues'', Art Spiegelman recounts a sad story 70 years later.
Editor
* ''Short Order Comix'' (1972–74)
* ''Whole Grains: A Book of Quotations'' (with Bob Schneider, 1973)
* ''
Arcade'' (with
Bill Griffith
William Henry Jackson Griffith (born January 20, 1944) is an American cartoonist who signs his work Bill Griffith and Griffy. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip '' Zippy''. The catchphrase "Are we having fun yet?" is credited t ...
, 1975–76)
* ''
Raw'' (with
Françoise Mouly, 1980–91)
* ''
City of Glass'' (graphic novel adaptation by
David Mazzucchelli of the
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), ' ...
novel, 1994)
* ''
The Narrative Corpse'' (1995)
* ''
Little Lit'' (with Françoise Mouly, 2000–2003)
* ''The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics'' (with Françoise Mouly, 2008)
* ''
Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts'' (2010)
Notes
References
Works cited
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* (Originally in ''Oral History Journal'' 15, Spring 1987)
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Further reading
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External links
*
Lambiek Comiclopedia article.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spiegelman, Art
1948 births
20th-century American artists
20th-century American Jews
20th-century American writers
21st-century American artists
21st-century American Jews
21st-century American writers
Academy of Art University faculty
Alternative cartoonists
American Book Award winners
American comic book editors
American comic strip cartoonists
American comics artists
American comics writers
American graphic novelists
American lecturers
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American postmodern writers
American writers about the Holocaust
Artists from New York City
Artists from Stockholm
American satirists
American satirical comics writers
American satirical comics artists
American political artists
Comics critics
Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême winners
Harpur College alumni
High School of Art and Design alumni
Jewish American comics writers
Jewish American comics artists
Jewish American illustrators
Jewish American novelists
Living people
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Novelists from New York (state)
People from Rego Park, Queens
Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards winners
Raw (magazine)
The New Yorker people
Underground cartoonists
Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame inductees
Writers from Queens, New York
Writers from Stockholm