Images from Spiegelman’s post-9/11 book, In the Shadow of No Towers. Spiegelman says that whenever he’s in France, he starts dreaming in French “with a retarded vocabulary.”Ĭrumb’s mini Cribs is over. She shows a picture of their bathroom and Crumb says, “That’s our bathroom.” She shows a picture of their hallway and Crumb says, “That’s our hallway.” She shows a picture of them hugging, and Crumb says, “Awww, we’re in love.” She talks about how the Crumbs moved to France and begins a slideshow of their house. Mouly brings up Crumb’s current wife, Aline. Spiegelman says, “I remember meeting your first wife and thinking it was your mother.” Crumb says, “That’s how I like them.” Crumb says he has absolutely no memory of this meeting. He says that after meeting him, he became satisfied that Crumb would do all of the revolutionary things he’d planned on doing himself, then went to drop acid in the park. Spiegelman says Witzend editor Wally Wood’s idea of underground was, “Spider-Man, but with tits.” Crumb says, “Hefner? His sense of humor?” then gives a thumbs-down and makes a fart noise.īoth cartoonists worked for Topps Bubblegum, and Spiegelman says this coincidence led him to look up Crumb when he moved to San Francisco. Crumb and Spiegelman reference Peter Saul, Basil Wolverton, Harvey Kurtzman, Terry Gilliam, Jay Lynch, Wally Wood, Hugh Hefner, and a slew of defunct comic magazines. He mentions MAD magazine, and Crumb says, “Wow.”Ī MAD magazine cover appears on the screen. He is wearing a vest like Perry White, Clark Kent’s boss. He says that after the CCA comics code, Donald Duck was more mature than superhero comics. Crumb adds, “Cute animals were good.” Spiegelman agrees. He says that superhero comics were read by the kids who beat them up. Spiegelman’s microphone clicks and sizzles as he lights a cigarette. Mouly mentions superhero comics and Crumb’s distaste for them. Crumb talks about the peak and decline of his brother’s obsession with comics. Crumb appears amazed and puzzled by this attention to detail. Mouly has picked out the New Yorker covers from the pictures and found separate images of each of them to display next to the photograph. The screen behind their heads shows a picture of Crumb and his brother’s childhood bedroom, which is covered with magazine covers. He says he threw his fedora in the woods, grew a beard, and started wearing “a stupid windbreaker.” A tech guy sneaks up behind him and rigs an auxiliary mic to augment the one that’s slipped down his lapel into uselessness. She asks whether Crumb saw himself in Crumb, and he says enough to completely change the way he looked. There is an illuminated MacBook in front of her. She says “umm” endearingly, with at least two Ms each time. Her shirt is plain yet complicated, the way French clothes tend to be. Being amblyopic means one can’t see 3-D very well, which seems like a potentially helpful affliction for a cartoonist, except when traversing a dimly lit stage, or performing most other tasks besides cartooning.įrancoise Mouly’s hair is an energetic doodle. I have to look this word up, because I first hear it as “apliopic,” which is so not a word that Google doesn’t even have a suggestion for it. Later, Spiegelman will mention that they are both amblyopic. He is not.Ĭrumb comes out first, tripping slightly, in fisherman sandals. People look around, assuming he’s actually standing somewhere. It’s the head of a department, whose name I don’t catch, and he is welcoming us to the evening. She wants us to turn our cell phones off.Īnother voice follows, loud and Oz-like. It turns out not to be God, but rather Maya King, a freshman nursing major. He reminds me of a helpful character I might have met in the CD-ROM game Myst, had there been helpful characters in it.Ī man turns to Leonardo Bloodfeather and his seatmate and asks, “Did you come to see Crumb or Spiegelman?” Without hesitation, Bloodfeather indicates himself with his thumb and says “Crumb,” then nods at his neatly coiffed, behoodied friend and says, “Spiegelman.” I have come to see both-actually, all three, the third of which is Francoise Mouly, whom the inquisitive man refers to as “Spiegelman’s wife.”Ī voice booms from the loudspeakers like the voice of God in the Book of Genesis, which Crumb recently illustrated (Norton, October 2009). I think he must have bought this t-shirt specially for this occasion, and I feel tender toward him. A red plastic tag pokes out from his shoulder like a solitary blood feather. The man in front of me has a biblically voluminous beard and a t-shirt printed with Leonardo’s jumping-jack man. There is a 2:1 bald-spot-to-ponytail ratio in Bass Concert Hall at the University of Texas.
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