BreakdownsBreakdowns

The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus" explores the comics form--and how it has formed him. This illustrated essay looks back at the 1960s as the artist pushes 60, in this collection that alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.
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.
"This legendary 1978 collection of comics by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the best-selling Maus, presents the seminal early works that changed how comics are made and appreciated today-now with a new Afterword by the author. Innovative, serious, funny, and many decades ahead of its time, Breakdowns is offered here in its entirety: the long-sought-after collection of the artist's comics of the 1970s, along with an introduction almost as long as the book it introduces-and just as autobiographically intimate and experimentally daring. At once the story of an artist and of his medium, Breakdowns alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir." --