One of my fondest art-school memories is Art Spiegelman telling the entire history of comics in an hour from within a cloud of cigarette smoke in the old auditorium on Columbus Drive. I didn’t grow up with comics nor ever made any, but some of the best artists of our time have dedicated themselves to the form.

Chris Ware, a master of the medium, was a grad student at the ‘Tute. He’d been published in Spiegelman’s anthology magazine Raw already, but was in the painting program, attempting to make “serious” art. Cartoonists are forever battling the perception of being lowbrow or less-than so-called fine artists.

I think Terry Zwigoff’s Robert Crumb documentary is one of the best movies about an artist ever made. Seeing him in the new movie about Spiegelman creates a link that’s hard to break. Judging solely by what’s on film, Spiegelman is a far less flawed individual than Crumb. I don’t know if that’s truly so as I know neither of them personally.

Spiegelman is haunted by his family history and the work he will forever be known for is all about his father’s WWII experiences but aside from a very Jewish brand of neurosis he doesn’t strike me as a damaged individual. The chainsmoking (now vaping) may counter that view, of course. No one can see inside anyone else really.

What I like best about the film is how it shows a whole community and network that was created to counter the conformist/consumerist culture of this country. As Emil Ferris said in the Q & A afterward, what artists do is needed now more than ever.

I still don’t “get” comics for the most part. I like some of the drawing and some of the writing but it rarely coheres into a whole. I’m either reading or looking but not both at once. Might be something wrong with me or just the fact I didn’t catch the comics bug early enough for it to burrow in properly.

Whatever your relationship to comics is, you should go see the Spiegelman movie.

My drawing from the front row during the Q & A.

I have a few signed and bookplate-stamped copies of Babbitt and Marvel Universe for sale. If you’d like one, send me $25 (postage included) via your favorite mode of payment and I’ll send it right out.

Also, I made another bookstore zine.