Heer - In love with art: Francoise Moulys adventures in comics with Art Spiegelman

Franoise Mouly, an editor and publisher of uncommon taste and creativity, and an artist in her own right, has spent nearly four decades transforming comics. With her husband, Art Spiegelman, Mouly founded the landmark magazine RAW , which showcased artists such as Chris Ware, Charles Burns and Sue Coe, and, along with Spiegelmans Maus , brought an avant-garde sensibility to the popular art form. As art editor of the New Yorker since 1993, Mouly has remade the face of that venerable magazine with covers that capture political and social upheavals, from the black-on-black cover after 9/11 to the Obamas pre-election fist-bump. And now, with TOONBooks, Mouly is at the forefront of a new wave of comics-making for children.

Based on exclusive interviews with Mouly, Spiegelman and a pantheon of comics artists including Dan Clowes, Anita Kunz and Bill Griffith In Love With Art is both the first book-length portrait of this female pioneer in a male-dominated industry and a rare, behind-the-scenes look at some of todays most iconic images.

Jeet Heer more thoroughly and widely understands comics history and the perplexing binomial life of the cartoonist better than anyone whos not one. As well-versed in literature as he is in comics, he always gets at the peculiar, poetical texture of his subject not only by what he writes, but how he writes it clearly, mellifluously and beautifully. Our humble discipline is singularly lucky to have him telling its story. Chris Ware

About the Author

Jeet Heer is a cultural journalist and academic who divides his time between Toronto and Regina. He has written for many publications including the Globe and Mail , Slate.com, the Boston Globe , the Walrus , the American Prospect , the Comics Journal , the Virginia Quarterly Review and the Guardian of London . He has co-edited eight books and been a contributing editor to another eight volumes. With Kent Worcester, Jeet co-edited A Comics Studies Reader (University Press of Mississippi), which won the Peter C. Rollins Book Award given annually to the best book in American Studies or Cultural Studies. Hes been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. His articles have been anthologized in both The Best American Comics Criticism (Fantagraphics) and The Best Canadian Essays collection for 2012. With Chris Ware, Jeet continues to edit the Walt and Skeezix series from Drawn and Quarterly, which is now entering its sixth volume.

About the

Exploded Views Series

Exploded Views is a series of probing, provocative essays that offer surprising perspectives on the most intriguing cultural issues and figures of our day. Longer than a typical magazine article but shorter than a full-length book, these are punchy salvos written by some of North Americas most lyrical journalists and critics. Spanning a variety of forms and genres history, biography, polemic, commentary and published simultaneously in all digital formats and handsome, collectible print editions, this is literary reportage that at once investigates, illuminates and intervenes.

Acknowledgements

While researching this book, I realized that the first time I saw Franoise Moulys work was in 1978 when I read the Marvel Comics adaptation of Charles Dickenss A Christmas Carol , which she coloured. I was eleven years old. Three years later, thanks to a review in the Comics Journal , I was introduced to Art Spiegelmans cartooning, including the early chapter of Maus , as well as the larger world of RAW . So Ive been living with the comics Franoise and Art have been bringing into the world for almost my entire conscious life. This book is an attempt to get a measure of their impact on me and the world at large. I couldnt have written it without Franoise and Art being willing to talk to me so extensively and with such candour and intelligence.

Mina Kaneko, Franoises assistant at the New Yorker , has been super helpful in setting up interviews, providing scans and in general making a hectic process run very smoothly. Alexa Rossell and Julia Phillips have been equally crucial with TOON Books assistance.

Thanks to the many artists who Ive talked to about Franoise Mouly (not all of whom are quoted in the book): Charles Burns, Ivan Brunetti, Frank Cammuso, Daniel Clowes, Bill Griffith, Anita Kunz, Rutu Modan, Gary Panter, Robert Sikoryak, Sue Coe, Frank Viva and Chris Ware. Many of these artists also graciously granted permission for their art to be reproduced.

A book about publishing and editing can find no better home than Coach House Books, which owns two Heidelberg presses and a superb editorial team. Im grateful for the prose-trimming and book-making acumen of the whole Coach House crew. The manuscript has been improved in innumerable ways by Jason McBride (who helped conceptualize this book), Stuart Ross, Alana Wilcox and Heidi Waechtler. Evan Munday and Leigh Nashs enthusiasm for the project and cleverness about getting the word out about it has been heartening. My only regret with Coach House is that my perpetual tardiness has caused them more stress than any honest publisher deserves. My email folder is littered with apologies Ive sent to Coach House, so Im pleased for once to be able to say thank you rather than sorry.

The Beguiling is more than a comic-book store. For anyone working on a book like this, it is an invaluable archive and source of comics scuttlebutt. A tip of the hat to the staff and to store owner Peter Birkemoe, who lent me some rare issues of RAW . By organizing the Toronto Comics Art Festival, Christopher Butcher and Miles Baker allowed me to spend an exhausting and rewarding weekend talking to Mouly and a contingent of her artists.

Thanks to Gary Groth and Eric Reynolds for assistance in getting permission to use Robert Crumb art. Beyond that, Im grateful to both for the many fine comics theyve published over the years.

Let me here light a candle to the memory of their colleague Kim Thompson, who, while I was working on this book, was diagnosed with cancer and died at the tragically young age of fifty-six. Kim not only translated some of the comics that appeared in RAW , he was also an immensely important figure in helping make comics truly cosmopolitan. There will be books written about Thompsons legacy.

My thinking about RAW has been informed by the massive and splendidly organized oral history of the magazine that Bill Kartalopoulos assembled, which ran in Indy magazine in 2005. This oral history is currently in internet limbo but will one day form the core of a book. Out of respect for Bills work, Ive refrained from quoting from the interviews hes conducted and given my own perspective on matters. But the quality of Bills work needs to be acknowledged.

The interviews Hillary Chute conducted for the book MetaMaus were of such consistently high quality I was often tempted to quote them wholesale. Ive resisted the urge but remain in her debt. I criticize the Comics Journal in the foreword, but its undeniable that the magazines three decades of criticism and reporting on comics constitutes the best single historical source we have on the medium.

My understanding of comics is inseparable from my many friendships with people who also love the form. Let me mention Ho Che Anderson, Sarah Brouillette, Chester Brown, Peggy Burns, Jerry Ciccoritti, Tom Devlin, Charles Hatfield, Tim Hodler, Brad Mackay, Dan Nadel, Chris Oliveros, Sean Rogers, Seth, Diana Tamblyn and Kent Worcester. Jessica Johnson, my best friend, deserves a special shout-out for our many conversations about editing, comics, design and the New Yorker . For more than a decade, Jessica has lugged her New Yorker collection from residence to residence, in no small part because whenever she looks at a cover it conjures up the whole content of the magazine. Her attachment to the New Yorker and its covers fortified my convictions about Moulys accomplishment. Art Goldhammer advised me on French history. Medrie Purdham had some wise thoughts on editing.