What a thrill it was for me to talk last week with comics master Art Spiegelman, who’ll give his Comix 101 lecture tonight at the Corcoran. If you’re still curious after reading my preview (it’s a PDF) in today’s Examiner (aimed, like Spiegelman’s talk, at comic book civilians, after all), here’s a little more Spiegelmania, in the from of excerpts from our conversation last Thursday.
SPIEGELMAN ON:
. . . the Google.
. . . living through a “radioactive moment” of accelerating cultural change.
. . . the contrast between drawing sequential art and drawing New Yorker covers, and on leaving the magazine and returning to comics circa 2001-2.
(Thanks to MonkeySee’s Glen Weldon for suggesting the question.)
. . . intellectual property rights.
Douglas Wolk on Maus, from his marvelous Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, Da Capo Press, 2007:
“For those of us who’ve been passionate about comics for ages, it’s hard not to resent Maus a little for being a lot of other people’s sole idea of what art comics are like. It’s like the equivalent of what Bob Marley is to reggae, the one fine example that too often stands in for the whole and becomes an inappropriate model and reference point. Oh, you like comics for grown-ups? I read Maus! Personal or political history in comics form? It’s like Maus! A story about the Holocaust? In the tradition of Maus! A graphic novel with any kind of serious intent? Right up there with Maus! (That’s not Spiegelman’s fault, of course, but the tallest poppy is the first to get cut down.)”
Art Spiegelman by Art Spiegelman
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.