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Spiegelman Studies Part 2 of 2: Breakdowns , No Towers and the Rest of the Canon
Author(s) -
Smith Philip
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12263
Subject(s) - comics , scholarship , shadow (psychology) , literature , canon , knight , rest (music) , art history , art , psychology , history , psychoanalysis , political science , law , medicine , physics , astronomy , cardiology
Art Spiegelman is one of the most‐discussed creators in Comic Book Studies. His Pulitzer‐winning work Maus (1980 and 1991) was, alongside The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Watchmen ([, 1987]), the catalyst to a sea change in the commercial and critical fortunes of the alternative comic book during the mid‐1980s. It has been a landmark text in critical discourse on comics ever since. The purpose of this and its companion paper is to offer a synthesis and reinvestigation of both the existing critical literature on Spiegelman as well as, perhaps most importantly, the lacunae within that literature. The aims of these two papers, then, are two‐fold: firstly, to establish where we have got to and, secondly, to suggest some directions for the future of Spiegelman scholarship. The first paper concerned Maus . This, the second of the two, is devoted to In The Shadow of No Towers ([Spiegelman, Art, 2004]), Breakdowns (1977 and [Spiegelman, Art, 2008]), and Spiegelman's other works.