Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse

How do you contain the life of an artist who’s created such wild and varied works as the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, and the anthropomorphic animal graphic novel about the Holocaust, Maus, into a mere hour and forty minutes? Art Spiegelman is hard to define. He’s a cartoonist, sure, but that sounds reductive. He’s a creator of underground, irreverent comics. He’s also responsible for bringing uncomfortable subjects like the Holocaust into the social lexicon, so that we may never forget the horrors of that history.

Like all great artists, he’s all of those things and more. He’s a deeply human person who enjoys himself some good old-fashioned juvenile humor, but uses his medium to touch upon more serious subjects in order to open up conversations about them. Before Maus and other pieces of media that found very similar releases around this time, like Shoah and even Schindler’s List years later, it was impossible to imagine the horror of the Holocaust, and it generally wasn’t discussed other than as a colossal event of genocide. It left millions dead, destroyed countless families, and it couldn’t be imagined.

Through his fractured relationship with his parents, both of whom were Holocaust survivors, Spiegelman crafted a graphic visualization to contextualize what they’d gone through. He opened up a conversation with his father that made up the basis of the first book, combining interviews with images of the stories he told. His mother, who died by suicide, haunts the stories, because of his trauma over the event of her death.

Spiegelman is also haunted, in a way, by the success of Maus, because everyone always wants to know how he feels about its monumental status. Does he think he’ll ever best it? And while it does loom large in his legend, it’s not the sole work that defines him. He’s able to continue creating, including controversial covers for the New Yorker, lampooning current events with both shock and humor.  

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse is just as much a snapshot of the artist’s life as it is of the art movements at the various times it covers, from the 1970s with R. Crumb’s creations causing a stir, up into the 2000s, where graphic novels are now given the respect they’ve always deserved. Spiegelman helped usher in a new era where comics were no longer considered “kids' stuff” but a genuine medium for telling thoughtful, complicated stories.

It’s always funny to me to see Maus be added to “banned books” lists because, even I, as a kid who lived in a tiny, itty-bitty little country town, accessed Spiegelman’s masterwork through my school’s library. It’s terrifying to imagine a work like this being banned, as its subject becomes more and more relevant with each passing day. Its mission to ensure we never forget, swept under the rug.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse arrives on Blu-ray thanks to ETR Media and OCN Distribution. A two-disc release, the discs are housed in a standard case with reversible cover art. Both sides of the cover art are created by Spiegelman—one side shows the artist wearing a “Maus”-style mask, at his drawing desk, and the other is a split-panel depiction of Spiegelman throughout the decades. If you were quick enough to order from Vinegar Syndrome's website, you could have snagged a now-out-of-print exclusive slipcover. 

Presented in 1080p high-definition video, Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse looks terrific. A multitude of formats are used for stock footage, from 16mm film to older video formats throughout the 80s and 90s. Modern-day talking-head formats look pristine and sharp, with expertly executed lighting and beautifully rendered colors. As a documentary, it’s not exactly a mind-blowing visual experience, but it does look as good as can be, regardless of the format being used for any given time period. The segments that dive into Spiegelman’s creations look appropriately intimate, shot in extreme close-up so we can experience each panel individually, before zooming out to show the forest for the trees.

The case indicates that the film is mixed for a DTS-HD MA 2.0 track, which is inaccurate. The film is available in DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround, with a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo option as well. Both mixes are great, with dialogue clarity favored, which is important given that, as a documentary, it’s about 90% people talking to the camera, or to each other. The 5.1 mix has a decent amount of rear-speaker activity from the musical score and needle drops, and some atmospheric effects, like the roar of a cheering crowd, will envelop the listener.

There is a lot here in terms of additional content that had to be cut from the film in order to make it a digestible 90-100 minutes. Extended interviews, deleted scenes, outtakes—it’s not exactly clear what’s what, though. Each supplement is given a very specific name, and it’s up to you to decide if it’s one of those things. Supplements are packed onto both discs. Even within that hurdle, there is well over five more hours of material to dig into. 

Disc One

• Art reads “As The Mind Reels” about watching The Dick Van Dyke Show (HD 1:35)
• Bill Griffith explains the art of woodcuts (HD 0:53)
• The history of cartoonists as reporters (HD 3:30)
• Hillary Chute on the academic impact of Art’s work (HD 1:15)
• Francoise Mouly on color separation (HD 1:00)
• Francoise Moily on having a printing press in their loft and what she made on it (HD 0:56)
• Art discusses MAD Magazine founder Harvey Kurtzman and his war comics (HD 2:10)
• Art tells the story of being censored by Marvel Comics and published by The Guardian (HD 1:39)

Disc Two

• Si Lewen and Art Spiegelman extended scene (HD 3:07)
• Bill Griffith tells how he and Art came up with Wacky Packages ideas in San Francisco (HD 1:28)
• The Spiegelmans and the Crumbs at the table (HD 2:06)
• Art Spiegelman’s full talk at Skidmore College (HD 1:24:19)
• Art gives a talk at the High School of Art and Design in NY, his alma mater (HD 1:19:31)
• Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly and Chris Ware on a panel at Comic Arts Brooklyn (HD 1:01:17)
• Art gives a talk in Reston, VA (HD 1:05:24)
• Art Spiegelman on “Forbidden Images Now” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with Hillary Chute (HD 1:08:54)

Artists like Art Spiegelman have redefined a medium for generations of people and a whole wave of artists. And documentaries like this give us an inside look into how the sausage is made. We hear Spiegelman talk about his loves, his fears, his insecurities, and everything he believes, both good and bad, and it’s a terrific journey into the mind. Loaded with tons of extras and a surprise surround sound mix, ETR Media’s release of Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse is Highly Recommended.