Last weekend, I bought a copy of Art Spiegelman’s newest book, Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! It’s one of those book that you have to experience tactilely. It’s oversized, hardcover, and brilliantly colored. In theory, it’s a reprint of a collection of work from his younger years, but the real gem of the book is the introduction, in which Spiegelman looks back across the years to figure out what turned him into the king of Mauschwitz.
Early works that paved the way to Maus are here, too — a “Maus” strip and the searing “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” –, but in the book’s opening meta-autobiographical artwork, the artist exposes how all the pieces fit together in his personal history and explores the wrenching process beneath the panels. One of the most striking pages features a messy collage of early drafts of “Hell Planet,” wherein he recounts his mother’s suicide. Looking over the page of his old pages, you see the story come to life.
For something of a sneak peek, Slate has an insightful Breakdowns slideshow: “Making Comics After Mauschwitz.”