Isabella and Art Spiegelman, later author of Maus, had met in 1966, through a group of Spiegelman's fellow-students at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and through Trina Robbins, who would later celebrate Barbara Hall Fiske's cartooning in her book " The Great Women Cartoonists.

The series was the brainchild of Topps consultant and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who came up with the product idea after the success of his earlier creations, Garbage Candy and Wacky Packages.

Charles Burns ' earliest works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine, and Another Room Magazine of Oakland, CA, but he came to prominence when his comics were published for the first time in early issues of RAW, the avant-garde comics magazine founded in 1980 by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman.

In 1970, when Spiegelman went to San Francisco, he and Isabella broke up for several years, then resumed their relationship, which, however became platonic by consent of all concerned when Françoise Mouly, whom Isabella considered both brilliant and a friend, came on the scene in 1976.

Spiegelman was not comfortable with the term, however, as many book-length comics were being referred to as " graphic novels " whether or not they were novelistic.

* Interview with Peter Maresca ( editor of So Many Splendid Sundays ) and Art Spiegelman from the KCRW radio show Bookworm-excerpt from the book

In San Francisco, Kuchar became involved with underground comics via his neighbors Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith.

* Swift Comics, Bantam Books, April 1971, ( with Art Spiegelman, Allan Shenker and Trina Robbins )

Spiegelman did a series of taped interviews over four days with his father, providing the basis of the longer Maus.

Spiegelman followed up with extensive research, reading survivors ' accounts and talking to friends and family who also survived.

Spiegelman said he was eager to have the book come out early, even if incomplete, in order to avoid comparisons with the animated film An American Tail from Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which he believed was inspired by Maus.

The centerpiece of the book is an extensive Spiegelman interview conducted by Hillary Chute, as well as interviews with his wife and children, sketches, photographs, family trees, assorted artwork and a DVD with video, audio, photos and an interactive version of Maus.

Spiegelman refused to " compromise with fascism " by allowing his work to be published there, in support of the African National Congress's cultural boycott in opposition to apartheid.

Spiegelman redrew the character with a fedora in place of his original police hat, but appended a note to the volume voicing his objection to this " intrusion ".

Spiegelman took advantage of the way Nazi propaganda films had depicted Jews as rats and vermin, though he first was struck by the metaphor after attending a presentation by Ken Jacobs in which films of minstrel shows were shown alongside early American animated films, abundant with racial caricatures.

The eighth chapter, made after the publication and unexpected success of the first volume, opens with a guilt-ridden Spiegelman ( now in human form, with a strapped-on mouse mask ) atop a pile of corpses — the corpses of the six million Jews upon whom Mauss success was built.

While the Poles have often been demonized for perceived antisemitism and complicity with the Nazis, Spiegelman shows numerous instances of Poles who risked themselves to aid Jews.

The line between the frame and the world is bolded by comments such as when Spiegelman, neurotically trying to deal with what Maus is becoming for him, says to his wife, " You'd never let me do so much talking without interrupting if this were real life ".

When a prisoner who is believed by the Nazis to be a Jew claims to be German, Spiegelman is confronted with the difficulty of whether to present this character as a cat or a mouse.

In the " present " portions, the pages are arranged in eight-panel grids, but in the " past " sections, Spiegelman found himself " violating the grid constantly " with many unique page layouts.

Spiegelman wanted the artwork to have a diary feel to it, and so drew the pages on stationery with a fountain pen and typewriter correction fluid.

One of the earliest was Joshua Brown's 1988 " Of Mice and Memory " from the Oral History Review, which deals with the problems Spiegelman faced in presenting his father's story.

Spiegelman depicts the various European races as different animal species, but Americans, both black and white, as dogs — with the exception of the Jews, who remain unassimilated mice.

* In the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, Jews have human bodies and the heads of mice while characters with their roots in the United States have human bodies and the heads of dogs, Germans have the heads of cats, and the French have the heads of frogs.

* Art Spiegelman combined biography and autobiography in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, about his father's Holocaust experiences, his own relationship with his father, and the process of interviewing him for the book.

Spiegelman struggled to find a publisher for Maus, but in 1986, the first six chapters were collected by Pantheon into a book, after a rave New York Times review of the work-in-progress.

This new collection of 6 × 9 hardcover comics for children represents the first time anyone has published comics specifically for young children learning to read, and brings Mouly ( together with Spiegelman, who is an advisor ) full-circle back to her roots as a small publisher and confirms her as one of comics ' most persistent groundbreakers.

Past visiting faculty have included Alison Bechdel, Ed Brubaker, Ivan Brunetti, James Kochalka, Jason Lutes, Scott McCloud, Seth, Art Spiegelman, Craig Thompson, and Chris Ware.

Other contributors included Dan Abdo, John Accurso, Bill Alger, Graham Annable, Ian Baker, Martin Cendreda, Greg Cook, Dave Cooper, Jordan Crane, Mark Crilley, Scott Cunningham, Vincent Deporter, Stephen DeStefano, Evan Dorkin, Brent Engstrom, Feggo ( Felipe Galindo ), Gary Fields, Emily Flake, Ellen Forney, Francho ( Arnoldo Franchioni ), Dave Fremont, Tom Gauld, Justin Green, Tim Hamilton, Charise Maricle Harper, Paul Karasik, John Kerschbaum, Jacob Lambert, Roger Langridge, Chris Lanier, Robert Leighton, Alec Longstreth, Jason Lutes, Pat Moriarity, Dan Moynihan, Nate Neal, Mark Newgarden, Travis Nichols, Lark Pien, Johnny Ryan, P. Shaw !, Karen Sneider, Israel Sanchez, Jason Shiga, R. Sikoryak, Jen Sorensen, Art Spiegelman, Jay Stephens, Wayno, Todd Webb, Drew Weing, Steve Weissman, Kurt Wolfgang, and Gahan Wilson.

** Penguin Books has commissioned new covers for books in its Penguin Classics line from some of the leading artists in comics, including Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Charles Burns.

Oliveros was inspired by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's Raw to publish an arts comics periodical.

Later, Art Spiegelman wrote in The New York Times Book Review, that Feininger's comics have “ achieved a breathtaking formal grace unsurpassed in the history of the medium .”

His small but influential publishing house ran until the 1980s, and included books by Jack Kerouac, Earl Lovelace, Norman Mailer, George Mikes, V. S. Naipaul, Ogden Nash, Andrew Robinson, Philip Roth, Art Spiegelman, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Charles Gidley Wheeler and Helene Hanff, and is now an imprint of Carlton Publishing Group.

Among the artists who influenced Maus, Spiegelman cited Frans Masereel, who had made an early woodcut novel called Mon Livre d ' Heures ( 1919, titled Passionate Journey in English ).

* Bijou Funnies — anthology with early work by Jay Lynch, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, and Skip Williamson

A number of cartoonists have cited Masereel as an influence on the development of the graphic novel: Art Spiegelman cited Mon Livre d ' Heures as an early influence on his Maus ,.

" Vaughn Bodé was the founding editor, with early issues featuring work by Bodé, Crumb, Deitch, Robbins, Rodriguez, Spiegelman, Joel Beck, Roger Brand, Ron Haydock, Jay Lynch, Larry Hama, Michael Kaluta, George Metzger, Ralph Reese, Steve Stiles, S. Clay Wilson, Bernie Wrightson and Bhob Stewart ( who became Gothic Blimp Works second editor ).

In the early 1980s Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly began publishing Raw Magazine, which included the early serialization of Spiegelman's award-winning graphic novel Maus.

" Spiegelman and Isabella, or Ladybelle, became a couple in Binghamton, NY., in early 1968, while he was experiencing a nervous breakdown which he has frequently mentioned ; and were spending a long weekend together in Trina Robbins ' apartment on E. 4th St. in Manhattan the day Anja Spiegelman committed suicide, May 21, 1968.

Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary ( 1972 ) inspired Spiegelman to open up and include autobiographical elements in his comics.

Cartoonists featured in the Legal Action Comics series include Hellman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Kim Deitch, Robert Williams, Tony Millionaire, Michael Kupperman, R. Sikoryak, Mike Diana, Johnny Ryan, Sam Henderson, Spain Rodriguez, John Linton Roberson, Lauren Weinstein and more.

Magazine cover artists include Art Spiegelman, who modernized the look of The New Yorker magazine, and his predecessor Rea Irvin, who created the Eustace Tilly iconic character for the magazine.