Art Spiegelman, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” and the artist behind this week’s sketchbook, is often credited as being the father of graphic novels. His response to the claim: “I demand a blood test!” But he has lately softened to the idea.
“About seven years ago, I was invited to do a comics page for the op-ed section of the Washington Post,” he recalled. “The editor was very excited and told me, ‘Great—we’ve never had a graphic novel before!’ I pointed out that it was only a one-page comic, but the editor repeated, ‘Right, and we never had a graphic novel before!’” As a result, Spiegelman decided it was time to embrace the term that has come to characterize “an ambitious comic book,” whether the narrative is drawn on one page or three hundred. “Since comics is the art of compression, I started looking back on the one-pagers which either in terms of their subject matter or in terms of their resonance had stayed in my brain,” he said.
See below a few comics pages from over the years that Spiegelman embraces as one-page graphic novels.
Milt Gross, for Ken magazine, 1939.|||
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Winsor McCay, “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend,” February 25, 1904.|||
Frank King, “Gasoline Alley,” October 20, 1929.|||
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George Herriman, “Krazy Kat,” November 5, 1939.|||
Harvey Kurtzman, filler page in “Lana” #2, October 1948.|||
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Jules Feiffer, “The Explainers,” 1960.|||
R. Crumb, “Bo Bo Bolinsky,” in Uneeda Comix, 1970|||
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Charles Schulz, “Peanuts,” June 13, 1971.|||
Lynda Barry, “Love Adventure,” March 4, 1987.|||
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George Booth, “Ip Gissa Gul,” The New Yorker, January 20, 1975.|||
Chris Ware, “Leftovers,” The New Yorker, November 27, 2006.|||
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