The first forty-five minutes or so of Disaster is quite strong, because it really focuses on the past, without attempting to score political points in the present. Spiegelman retraces his career, starting with an internship at Topps collector cards that led to a long-standing freelance relationship. He became one of the stars of the underground comix movement, along with his late friend, R. Crumb, whom we see attending a dinner party at Spiegelman’s.
For over a decade, Spiegelman worked on the two-volume Maus, continually interviewing and re-interviewing his father, since his mother had died under painful circumstances during his childhood. Spiegelman is the first to admit he was shocked by the reception, including best-seller lists and the Pulitzer Prize. Arguably, the timing was just right since publication of the two volumes in 1986 and 1991, releasing between Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) and Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), a period when mainstream readers really started educating themselves on the full implications of the Shoah.
The second half of Disaster largely focuses on Spiegelman coming to terms with his unexpected success and figuring out what to do next. Arguably, his lack of focus was detrimental to Bernstein & Dolin’s profile as well. Eventually, they present him as an impassioned warrior against censorship, but such terms are somewhat disingenuous. There are no laws against reading any books in Texas or Florida (the two states primarily mentioned). Certain school boards have, ill-advisedly, decided certain titles are not appropriate for young readers. The fact that Maus was one such title is foolish irony that discredits their entire judgement—yet, the fact remains school boards make these kind of decisions everyday, in one direction or another, because space and acquisition budgets are limited.
