Brightest Young Things

Photos: Dakota Fine
Words: Evan Keeling

Art Spiegelman wandered into the lecture hall a few minutes before the time he was to take the stage. He settled down into his reserved seat in the front. I was thrown off at first; he was wearing a sport jacket with a pipe clutched between his lips. He looked very academic, not like the vest wearing, chain smoking neurotic he portrays himself as in his comics. But then again, this was an academic lecture at the Corcoran Museum of Art so perhaps he was playing to his audience.

As soon as Spiegelman took the stage there was no doubt who he was, and he was about to put on a good show. He spoke with a smirk and a heavy dose of self-deprecating humor. His lecture was largely a history of comics, filtered through Spiegelman’s life experiences. If the audience was already familiar with the history of comics and the struggle for it to be recognized as an art form, there wasn’t any new ground being covered. Spiegleman went over the classic stories, Wertham, comic burnings, the Comics Code and EC Comics. After Spiegelman left the world of mainstream comics, he dove into his experiences in the underground comics’ scene by how and what was done that led to the expanded world that comics are today. Of course what lecture on comics, as an art, would have been complete without addressing foreign comics. How in Japan and Europe their comics go beyond superheroes, into other genres like romance, crime and sports. All this was interspersed with dramatic readings of Spiegelman’s autobiographical intro to his re-printed comic Breakdowns, with visual aids of comic panels projected on a giant screen.

Spiegelman wants to pull comics up at the same time he was pulling the world of fine art down. Making statements about Roy Lichtenstein being condescending, “He did as much for comics as Warhol did for soup.” As well as pointing out, “Jazz started out as whorehouse music.” Spiegelman seemed to be attempting to level the playing field by pointing out the humble beginnings of other art so that the humble beginnings of comics don’t appear so different.

During the Q/A session, Spiegelman was very open about not being a tastemaker. He was set in his ways about comics, and his methods are older. He doesn’t claim knowledge or much interest in web comics; his comics are the ones of the printed variety. It’s about comics celebrating their "bookness" and the printed art.

While it was great to learn about the history of comics and what influenced a creator, I would rather have heard what Spiegelman does currently and what he recommends for the creative process. As a creator, I always want to hear about the nitty gritty from fellow creators.