Beyond Maus: The experimental comics of Art Spiegelman

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning Maus (Spiegelman 1996), the influence and importance of Art Spiegelman's other work has been less well-documented, despite it forming a cohesive but varied body of work of which Maus is just one part. This article examines the blend of formal experimentation, autobiography, and the evangelical passion for the medium of comics which is characteristic of the full range of Spiegelman's mature work, and in particular looks at the formal innovations of Breakdowns (Spiegelman 2008), which collected Spiegelman's 1970s experimental work. This aesthetic was further explored by the Spiegelman-edited Raw magazine, providing both exposure and influence on the generation of alternative cartoonists that followed. The article also traces how Spiegelman's engagement with classic cartoon strips contributed to his 9/11 commentary, In The Shadow Of No Towers (Spiegelman 2004). This article does not ignore Maus, Spiegelman's most widely known and critically acclaimed work, and examines how his previous experimental work informed Maus' sophisticated narrative and graphic approach, whilst his unflinching, honest autobiographical work enabled him to produce such an unsentimental, yet poignant and potent narrative of the Holocaust.