When the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for its vivid depiction of the Holocaust and its effects, critics and mainstream audiences recognized that a comic book was capable of exploring complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. Maus’s creator Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) became the most famous alternative cartoonist in America. Art Spiegelman: Conversations reveals an artist who had long been working to establish comics as a serious art form. With his wife Francoise Mouly, he founded and edited RAW-the most in-fluential showcase for avant-garde comics in America-which published early work by such well-established cartoonists as Chris Ware, Kaz, and Gary Panter. Spiegelman’s essays and lectures helped to establish that comics have a history and a canon.

This collection of interviews and profiles spans 1976-2006 and covers Spiegelman’s career as an artist, critic, educator, and art historian. A previously unpublished interview conducted by the volume’s editor discusses themes rarely touched upon in earlier profiles.