Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (Pantheon Graphic Library) - Tapa dura

The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus reflects on the comics form and its influence on his life and art as he traces his evolution from comics obsessed boy to a neurotic adult exploring the effects of his parents' memories of Auschwitz on his own son, in a volume that includes a facsimile of Breakdowns, the artist's comics from the 1970s. 75,000 first printing.

Perhaps best known for his masterful Holocaust narratives Maus and Maus II– which in 1992 won a Pulitzer Prize–Art Spiegelman is one of the world's best known and beloved comic artists.

Born in Stockholm in 1948, Spiegelman rejected his parents’ aspirations for him to become a dentist, and began to study cartooning in high school and drawing professionally at age 16. He went on to study art and philosophy at Harpur College before joining the underground comics movement. As creative consultant for Topps Candy from 1965-1987, Spiegelman designedWacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids and other novelty items, and taught history and aesthetics of comics at the School for Visual Arts in New York from 1979-1986. In 1980, Spiegelman foundedRAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine, with his wife, Françoise Mouly. His work has since been published in many periodicals, includingThe New Yorker, where he was a staff artist and writer from 1993-2003. He has since published a children’s book entitledOpen Me... I’m A Dog, as well as the illustration accompaniment to the 1928 bookThe Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March.

Spiegelman is the author, most recently, of In the Shadow of No Towers. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and, in addition to the winning the Pulitzer Prize, Maus was nominated for a National Book Critics' Circle Award. His drawings and prints have been widely exhibited here and abroad. He lives in New York City with his wife and their two children.