
How Art Spiegelman got involved in the world of underground comix
Clip: 4/15/2025 | 1m 40sVideo has Closed Captions
Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” was featured in the comic book “Funny Aminals” in 1972.
Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” was featured in the comic book “Funny Aminals” in 1972, with a cover by Robert Crumb, one of Spiegelman’s comic heroes. Being part of “Funny Aminals” helped Spiegelman feel like he had established himself in the comics scene.
Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...

How Art Spiegelman got involved in the world of underground comix
Clip: 4/15/2025 | 1m 40sVideo has Closed Captions
Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” was featured in the comic book “Funny Aminals” in 1972, with a cover by Robert Crumb, one of Spiegelman’s comic heroes. Being part of “Funny Aminals” helped Spiegelman feel like he had established himself in the comics scene.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- This is an underground comic that came out in 1972, "Funny Aminals."
I was in it, and it was very important to me because the cover was by Robert Crumb and he was the god king of underground comics, setting that whole medium and idiom in motion.
But it had other great cartoonists in it as well, so it was a gathering of a tribe.
It starts, incidentally, with a drawing based on a photo by Margaret Burke White.
That was the prisoners at Buchenwald being released, in Life Magazine, and that photo is quoted here with the mice, and there's a little arrow toward one of the mice in the second row that says Papa, and it's all framed as being in a photo album.
So I'll read it to you.
Maus.
- When I was a young mouse in Rego Park, New York, my papa used to tell me bedtime stories about life in the old country during the war.
- And so Mickey die Katzen made all the mice to move into one part from the town.
It was very crowded in the ghetto.
- Golly!
- It was fences put up all around.
No mouse could go out from the ghetto.
No food and no medicines could go in.
They treated us like we were insects.
Worse.
I can't even describe.
- Psst.
You vant a potato to buy?
I was really proud to be in this comic when it came out.
And I realized I'd crossed the Rubicon into a different area of comics making.
I would say this is the end of my juvenilia and the beginning of whatever comes after.
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
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Explore the career of cartoonist Art Spiegelman and his award-winning graphic novel Maus. (2m)
Art Spiegelman interpreted the Holocaust from a child’s perspective
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Art Spiegelman’s “Li’l Pitcher” comic depicted the Holocaust from a child’s perspective. (1m 24s)
Art Spiegelman wrote this comic about his family’s experiences on 9/11
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Art Spiegelman later depicted the Twin Towers falling in his comic, “In the Shadow of No Towers.” (1m 21s)
The double meaning behind Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”
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“Maus” was about Art Spiegelman’s father’s experiences in the Holocaust and their relationship. (1m 57s)
One of the most important pages of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”
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In this segment of “Maus,” Art Spiegelman illustrated four Jewish victims hung by Nazis in Poland. (2m 6s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipSupport for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...