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Author and illustrator Art Spiegelman spoke to an audience in the Tate Student Center on Sept. 25 on the history of comics and their value to society. Spiegelman is co-founder and editor of Raw magazine and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus.
Some highlights of his presentation:
“Comics are not always lurid; indeed, they are a kind of art. I think comics have gotten a bad rap. They are lurid sometimes, but some comics are boring, and they are still comics.
“Comics are a marriage of words and pictures that manage to work their way into your brain; they function like your brain functions, with iconographic images . . . with the most important aspect of comics being the juxtaposition of the pictures. Comics have had a hard time simply being what they are. Even the word ‘comics’ is a problem: in America, it assumes that something is funny. I prefer ‘comix,’ a combination of words and pictures.
“I don’t hang out in comics stores much. There just aren’t any good comics for kids. Unless a parent is a comics geek, then kids won’t be part of the mix.” |
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