Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman, born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors, is a Polish-American cartoonist and editor whose graphic novel *Maus* reshaped how the medium is perceived. He began his career in the mid-1960s at Topps, the bubblegum and trading card company, where he co-created the parodic *Wacky Packages* and later *Garbage Pail Kids*, providing his main income for two decades. In the 1970s, he emerged in the underground comix scene with short, experimental, autobiographical work collected in *Breakdowns* (1977). He then devoted 13 years to *Maus*, a postmodern work depicting Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs, exploring his relationship with his father, a survivor. It won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and is considered a landmark. With his wife, editor and designer Françoise Mouly, he co-edited the influential comics magazine *Raw* (1980–1991), introducing talents like Charles Burns, Chris Ware, and Ben Katchor. After a decade as a contributing artist for *The New Yorker* starting in 1992, he left to create *In the Shadow of No Towers* (2004), about the September 11 attacks. A tireless advocate for comics literacy, he has taught, lectured, and mentored younger artists. In 2022, he received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.