I wanted to create comics as soon as a I learned humans were behind them, that they were not natural phenomena like trees and boulders.

Following the advent of the censorious Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950s Spiegelman sees comics' potential as having stagnated until the rise of underground comix in the late 1960s. It was intended to reference the 1991 Crown Heights riot in which racial tensions led to the murder of a Jewish yeshiva student. Editor
Arcade (with Bill Griffith)
Raw (with Françoise Mouly)
The Narrative Corpse
The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics (with Françoise Mouly).

Spiegelman is an advocate for greater comics literacy. As editor and as a teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York Spiegelman has promoted greater understanding of comics and mentored younger cartoonists. A selection of these strips appeared in the collection Breakdowns in 1977.