After
the release of his Pulitzer Prize winning Maus,
Art Spiegelman was dead set against becoming the self-appointed Stephen
Spielberg of the graphic novel world. Such
a problem would be unimaginable for a comic artist when Spiegelman began his
career. Clara Kuperberg & Joëlle
Oosterlinck profile the graphic novelist in the European television
documentary, Art of Spiegelman (clip here), which screens
during the 2013 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Jewish
Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Spiegelman’s
tragic family history has been his greatest source of inspiration and
depression. The son of Holocaust
survivors, Maus is almost entirely
based on a series of interviews he conducted with his father. It just happens to feature mice and cats, much
like An American Tale (Spielberg
rears his head again), which is why Spiegelman rushed out the first six chapters,
lest he be accused of copying his suspected copycat. Whether the director of E.T. was really looking to magpie the work of the co-editor of RAW seems rather debatable, but it is
clearly a subject to avoid Spiegelman.
Even
before Maus, Spiegelman produced the
intensely personal Breakdowns, which
directly addresses his mother’s suicide. Casual comic readers may also be
surprised when they recognize some of Spiegelman’s work-for-hire projects,
including the original Topps Garbage Pail Kids trading cards and some of the
more controversial New Yorker covers
(including the hot button Hasidic Jew and West Indian couple kissing),
commissioned by his wife Françoise Mouly, the magazine’s art editor.
