Named by Time magazine as one of its Top 100 Influential People in 2005, acclaimed comic artist Art Spiegelman kicked off the Penn Humanities Forum last night at Irvine Auditorium.
Spiegelman, renowned for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strips, "Maus" and "Maus II," addressed a diverse group comprised of diehard fans and students required to attend the event for class.
"I learned about sex from 'Betty and Veronica,' economics from 'Donald Duck,' and philosophy from 'Peanuts,'" Spiegelman said. "I should have been prepared when aliens took over the government."
With a cigarette dangling between his fingers throughout the event, Spiegelman relayed other perks of comic book reading.
"Comics function like the brain in that they are short bursts of language and iconic pictures," Spiegelman said, adding that a still picture slows down the story and makes it easier to digest.
"Spiegelman was very interesting because he interjected historical sequences," Wharton freshman Joyce Lee said.
Josh Ratner, an English graduate student, echoed Lee. "It was awesome to learn about [comic book] history," he said.
Referring to his strips as a "doodling stutter," Spiegelman manipulates his comics to capture specific experiences.
His best-selling "Maus" and "Maus II," the only graphic novels to merit a Pulitzer Prize, portray Spiegelman's relationship with his Holocaust survivor father.
Still, his work is not intended to be historical.
"I can't respond to history because it moves too fast. Look how long it took me to get to World War II," he joked.
Spiegelman's most recent work, "In the Shadow of No Towers," shows a similar reaction to Sept. 11.
"I wanted to capture my experience from that day," he said. "The evanescing bones of tower try to capture that."
Admitting a nostalgic fondness for genre comics "Spiderman" and "Fantastic Four," Spiegelman paid more tribute to underground writers Daniel Clowes and Joe Sacco.
He lamented that in light of the "ever-shrinking space" allotted to comic strips in newspapers, good graphic novels have become rare.
Spiegelman advised aspiring artists to treat the comic book like a "self-reflexive hall of mirrors. An artist worth his salt reflects the world around him. Find something to say and mean it," he suggested.
