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Tuesday, January 09, 2001 By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Art Spiegelman has built his life around comics. He and his wife, Francoise Mouly, founded a popular adult "comix" periodical called RAW Magazine in the 1980s. And, in 1992, Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize for "Maus," his adult comic book story set during the Holocaust.
Now, inspired by their two children's fascination with comic books, Spiegelman and Mouly have created "Little Lit" (HarperCollins, $19.95), an outsize, hardback collection of "folklore and fairy tale funnies" for children.
Inside the book, children and their parents will find 12 stories, all done in comic book style -- complete with panels, bright colors, bursts of language and quick-moving plots. The tales range from a sweetly wacky new version of "Humpty Dumpty" to a sinister look at what happened in "Sleeping Beauty" after the prince and princess married to Spiegelman's cheerful riff on an old Hasidic tale about a prince who thought he was a rooster.
To add to kids' fun, "Little Lit" also includes several picture puzzles, plus the board and pieces for a game edgily titled "Fairy Tale Road Rage." Created by adult comic book artist Chris Ware, the game allows kids to develop their own fairy tales as they make their way around the game board.
Some of today's best comic book artists are represented in "Little Lit," including Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Kaz and, of course, Spiegelman himself.
One of the stories in "Little Lit" is a classic 1943 retelling of "The Gingerbread Man" by Walt Kelly, best known for his "Pogo" comic strip. And the book offers the comic book debuts of several well-known children's author/illustrators, including William Joyce, Barbara McClintock and David Macaulay.
Although the stories in "Little Lit" are entertaining, many of them are also somewhat disturbing or even dark in their tone. But Spiegelman contended in a recent interview that such darkness is nothing new in children's literature, especially in fairy tales.
Children today often are raised on pasteurized versions of fairy tales, but the original stories often are disquieting and even frightening, he noted. Like famed child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, Spiegelman believes that the dark side of fairy tales helps children work through their deepest emotions -- emotions they often hide from adults.
"I didn't realize how conservative the children's book culture was until I had kids," Spiegelman said. "The picture books I read to my kids were often treacly and condescending."
Since it was published several months ago, "Little Lit" has garnered rave reviews from critics and consistently has shown up on The New York Times children's best-seller list. For Spiegelman and Mouly, the instant popularity of "Little Lit" is a vindication of their belief that -- contrary to popular thought -- comic books can be both entertaining and educational.
"It's certainly an uphill battle to insist that there is something of value in comics," said Spiegelman, who published his first children's book, "Open Me, I'm A Dog," three years ago.
Spiegelman and Mouly first understood the connection between kids and comics when their two children, Nadja, now 13, and Dashiell, now 9, happily spent hours poring over Spiegelman's vast collection of classic comic books.
Spiegelman jokes that he sacrificed a valuable comic book collection to parenthood, but he's serious when he talks about how the comics helped teach his children the fun and value of reading.
"Comics are really one of the best ways of teaching a kid how to read," Spiegelman said. "Kids don't think of comics as medicine. And comics also offer a more lucid kind of storytelling than many other types of kids' books."
Mouly, a native of France, grew up in a culture where comic books are a revered part of life, sold in inexpensive folio editions in bookstores and corner newsstands. Some of the most popular European comics, such as "Tin Tin" and "Asterix," have even been translated for English-speaking audiences.
It's quite a different story in America. Comic books were immediately popular when they first were published here in the 1930s, but they were also strenuously attacked by children's librarians and others for their "low quality" art and writing.
Many of the comics of that period are rather lurid and gory, but others are fast-moving, brightly illustrated retellings of classic books. Criticism of the comics continued to swell, however, and anti-comics sentiment peaked in 1954, when the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held widely publicized hearings on whether comic books sparked bad behavior in America's teen-agers.
Psychologist Frederick Wertham, author of "Seduction of the Innocent," testified to the lawmakers that his research showed comics "create a mental readiness for temptation" and created "an atmosphere of deceit and cruelty" for children.
In its final report, the subcommittee declared there was no proven connection between comic books and juvenile delinquency. But the lawmakers also called on the U.S. comic book industry to establish a code virtually eliminating the violence and sex in comics.
Backed into a corner, the comic book industry created the "Comic Book Code," designed to promote "good taste and decency." Publishers who wanted to comply with the code were forced to have every comic book vetted for sex and violence. Complying with the code quickly became a fact of commercial life: For years, magazine wholesalers refused to distribute any comics that didn't display on their covers a logo reading "Approved by the Comics Code Authority."
In the 1980s, most comic book publishers ended their compliance with the code. The advent of specialty comic book stores meant publishers could now sell their titles directly to the public, without going through magazine wholesalers -- or the comic censors.
Meanwhile, counter-culture American artists had begun creating a new genre of adult comic books. These "comix" pushed the edge of mainstream publishing and sparked several famous obscenity lawsuits.
Spiegelman's 1992 Pulitzer for "Maus" eventually helped adult comics win some literary respectability, and today, adult "graphic novels" have become popular items in bookstores.
American kids, however, were left behind in this cultural war over the comics. For years, comic books for American kids have been generally confined to superhero comics or the "Archie" series.
With "Little Lit," Spiegelman and Mouly hope to begin a movement to bring comics back as a staple of American childhood. As they state, with heavy irony, on the back cover of "Little Lit": "Comics -- they're not just for grown-ups anymore!"
Spiegelman said he was aiming to create a "G-rated" book. "Not in the sense of 'G' for 'gooey,' but 'G' for 'Gee, that's interesting,' " he added. " 'Little Lit' really is for kids, but we hope lots of grown-ups will be along for the ride."
Building on the best-selling success of "Little Lit," Spiegelman and Mouly are already at work on a sequel, which they expect will be published late this year or early next.
"I'm not sure if it's a renaissance of comics, or a last gasp. It depends on how optimistic I feel," Spiegelman said. "But we are definitely living through a moment when comics are shifting the place they occupy in our culture. I feel like everything old is new again."
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