Art Spiegelman rewind

This is a pretty great find. Recently Montreal cartoonist Rick Trembles was combing through a stack of old CARtoons magazines he nabbed from a flea market and spotted a winning submission to an art contest from an "Art Spiegelman" from "Rego Park, New York."

For the uninitiated, CARtoons was (is?) an "automotive humour" magazine dedicated to car culture and goofy cartoons about said car culture. Like many kids, I read it compulsively from age 13 to 16.  

According to Trembles, the issue in question is from November 1963, which, if this is the same Spiegelman (Maus, Raw), would have placed him at 15-years-old --- the perfect target market for CARtoons. I'm not in a position to confirm or deny this, but if it's true this is a great curiousity from the early career of a master cartoonist -- and a stellar score by Trembles. That's a detail from the image below; click here for a full view. 


 

Swipe File: Special Spiegelman Edition

One of the best things about the once-great but now mediocre Comics Journal, was their monthly Swipe File column in which they exposed de facto comics plagiarism -- a practice that was, in fact, quite common among superhero cartoonists. Regardless of this, it was always fun and eye-opening to witness the inspiration behind some of your favourite comics, while visualizing a coffee-addicted cartoonist cribbing from an old pulp novel in an effort to meet deadline. 

This all came to mind thanks to this still photo in the New York Times, which I saw yesterday. It's taken from a London play called Enron that's debuting on Broadway later this week. The play is about the financial disaster that was Enron, the once-great and greatly-troubled American energy company. Is it just me, or does it look like someone in set design was a big fan of Maus?:

  

I mean, these two mouse-men are dead-ringers for Vladek and crew, don't you think?

I hereby proclaim this a stone-cold swipe!