Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!

by Art Spiegelman

This legendary 1978 collection of comics by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the best-selling Maus , presents the seminal early works that changed how comics are made and appreciated today—now with a new Afterword by the author.

“Some of the smartest criticism of the comics genre ever rendered.” — NPR

Innovative, serious, funny, and many decades ahead of its time, Breakdowns is offered here in its the long-sought-after collection of the artist's comics of the 1970s, along with an introduction almost as long as the book it introduces—and just as autobiographically intimate and experimentally daring.
 
At once the story of an artist and of his medium, Breakdowns alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Art, Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Art Spiegelman is an American cartoonist, editor, and cultural innovator whose work has profoundly influenced the perception of comics as a legitimate art form, blending literary sophistication with experimental visual storytelling. Emerging from the underground comix movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Spiegelman quickly distinguished himself with a distinctive approach that combined meticulous craftsmanship, psychological insight, and narrative complexity, challenging conventions of sequential art and the boundaries between personal memoir and historical record. He co-founded the landmark anthology Raw with his wife, Françoise Mouly, which became a platform for cutting-edge, avant-garde cartoonists from around the world, blending surrealist imagery, literary experimentation, and bold visual ideas that redefined the possibilities of the medium. Spiegelman is best known for his groundbreaking graphic novel Maus, a haunting, deeply personal depiction of his father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, which used anthropomorphic characters to explore trauma, memory, and identity with unprecedented depth; the work earned a Special Pulitzer Prize and established Spiegelman as a central figure in both literary and visual culture. Beyond Maus, he has contributed influential cartoons and covers to The New Yorker, including the iconic 9/11 cover, demonstrating his ability to communicate complex emotional and cultural truths with economy and symbolic resonance. His artistic sensibility reflects influences from early twentieth-century cartoonists, modernist design, typography, and the visual language of newspapers and advertising, while also incorporating pop culture, surrealism, and abstraction. Spiegelman has consistently experimented with the interplay of image and text, treating comics as a medium that mirrors cognitive processes of memory, perception, and emotional experience. In addition to his creative output, he has curated exhibitions, edited anthologies, and published critical essays on comics history and theory, advocating for the recognition of the medium as serious art and mentoring generations of cartoonists. He has also worked in graphic design, creating posters, album covers, and commemorative stamps, and his visual interventions often reflect his interest in narrative structure, cultural commentary, and the power of imagery to shape public understanding. Throughout his career, Spiegelman has been a vocal advocate for freedom of expression and a critic of censorship, engaging in public discourse on political and social issues, and demonstrating how comics can address profound ethical and historical questions. His pioneering work, editorial vision, and relentless innovation have transformed both the aesthetics and the intellectual reception of comics, proving that the medium can handle grief, history, and identity with sophistication, subtlety, and emotional resonance. Spiegelman’s legacy is evident in the work of contemporary graphic novelists and in the broader cultural recognition of comics as an art form capable of exploring human experience, social commentary, and the complexities of memory and trauma, making him one of the most influential figures in modern visual storytelling.

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to forget how important Spiegelman is to the medium of comics outside of Maus. As he so eloquently demonstrates in his comics preface, the shadow of that book will Spiegelman for the remainder of his life, and rightfully so. Still, it's these early works where one can see an artist willing to experiment and play with the form of comics.

"Prisoner of Hell Planet," "Little signs of passion," and an early version of "Maus" are just some of the wonderful stories in this collection, and the massive size of the book allows the reader to simply disappear into the linework and textures and worlds Spiegelman creates.

This book will obviously disappoint readers looking for plain or direct plots. This book isn't about that. These are stories interested in the form, with playing with the medium of comics. These early works show an artist finding a creative voice and seeing what is possible through comics and for that reason I took my time with every page just studying, or often drooling, at these layouts and the emotional register that was being conveyed.

Breakdowns is a really underappreciated book, and so if the reader is interested in exploring the medium, or else observing Spiegelman's early work then Breakdowns is absolutely a must-read. I will open this book for inspiration over and over again finding something new and wonderful and inspiring.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Breakdowns" is a reprint of the same book published in the 70s except with a brief autobiographical intro by the author. The intro features nothing new to anyone with a passing interest in artists/writers: growing up Spiegelman wasn't good at sports so he turned to the life of the mind. He was influenced by MAD magazine, R.Crumb, and Peanuts. Wow, just like everyone else who grew up to be a cartoonist then.

Then onto the book itself which features short strips. One is a dry and unfunny examination of what makes a joke funny. Another deconstructs detective stories and soap operas and shows up how basic and hammy their structures are. Really? I'd never have thought of that myself. He reprints the only decent strip here "Prisoner from Hell Planet" but seeing as it was already in "Maus", the only book he's done that's worth reading, it feels like padding. The rest of the book features one page illustrations of his dreams and a few more dull tellings of his life in NY (his apartment has roaches, his work is underappreciated).

The book is massive, about 2 A4 sheets side by side, but very short coming in at a brief 87 pages. Besides irrelevant and frankly boring strips that shows Spiegelman is aware of how art is created, there's nothing here of any interest.

Spiegelman writes in a lofty afterword that "In 1978... there was no demand for a deluxe large format album that collected the scattered handful of short autobiographical and structurally experimental comics I'd made between 1972 and 1977 - except by me". It's 2010 now and there's still no demand.

If you're as interested in Art Spiegelman as Art Spiegelman is then you'll love this book.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific book that chronicles Spiegelman's coming-of-age amidst a jewish upbringing condemned to neurotic blame and guilt put on by the holocaust. it's a declaration of how he arrived to be a comic book artist, his father exclaiming "you have to use what little space you have to pack inside everything you can"...one suitcase...in case the Nazis come...to "everything you can" in a tiny graphic square. he is an experimental concept artist, exploring the implications of the frame, of making victims into mice, of putting Picasso and pornography in the same frame and letting a baby read Kafka as his mother contemplates suicide. He is trying to elicit a notion, concept, right. In this "breakdown" of his technique, he interfuses guiding quotes by famous authors such as Victor Shklovsky's "the purpose of art is to impart the senasation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known." and Susan Sontag's "no caption can permanently restrict or secure a picture's meaning"; these are displayed over the drawings from his comics, to implicate their true meaning, not as narrative but as stimulus of feeling, instigation. That's what he is, an in your face writer, trying to get you to think as crazy provoked as he is.

[Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The original three page Maus comic and Prisoner on the Hell Planet are amazing feats of comics. Prisoner on the Hell Planet has got to be one of the best comics I've read. The blown up edition of it really enhances its power outside of being an insert in the Maus graphic novel. The rest of the items in this book are basically highly meta deconstructions of the comic medium and of different aspects of storytelling. Some of them are great, others completely miss the mark. Several are just too obtuse or intellectual, seemingly for no purpose. But as I said those two comics are gems and there are several other really good pieces in here, but a lot of it seems like he was experimenting and trying to find the subject matter that he would eventually apply his experiments and deconstructions of the medium to. This of course was Maus, and this is also why those two comics I mentioned are the most successful.
The introduction is also quite good, again, sometimes too obtuse, but mostly really good.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major hitch with this volume is it's too large to comfortably read in the manner I prefer to read: on my back, in bed. Otherwise, I.

[Dylan Zucati · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is much in Spiegelman's catalogue post-Maus that has to do with Maus' stranglehold over him. He can't do anything but celebrate his success, yet everything he touches must be referencing it in some way, by him and those reading the work.

This however, this is evidence enough that Art can stand on his own work, separate from what was his most successful. I loved this enough that I will be keeping an eye out for any copies at my local book stores.

[Clàudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guai per conèixer a spiegelman

[Andrew Shaffer]

Odds and ends, little experiments that feel unfinished or abandoned.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, if nothing else, this book makes clear, to those not already aware of it, what a high opinion Spiegelman has of himself. Not that it's entirely unjustified, of course; he is a master of comics technique, as is abundantly evident here. He's also an impressive stylist, capable both of striking images in his "own" style and excellent pastiche work of various figures, not to mention cunning use of collage. But he also comes across as pretty consistently impressed with himself, which is unseemly at best--to Canadian sensibilities, anyway. At any rate, this book reprints the late 1970s collection of a bunch of Spiegelman's underground work preceded by a comics-form memoir and followed by a prose afterward, in both of which Spiegelman traces his development as an artist. There's great cartooning in the former and lots of interesting information in the latter. Seeing the reprinted material is worthwhile as well, since most of it I'd never seen before despite some of it having a high reputation (e.g. the original 3-page "Maus," "Ace Hole"). What most of this stuff has in common is experimentation, mainly with the formal properties of comics and the tension between form and content. Spiegelman's very much a "form" guy, with relatively little interest in narrative content evident here--ironic, give his overwhelmingly greatest success is the equally experimental and formalist but nevetrtheless narratively-driven Maus. (Indeed, one of the features of the initial comics memoir is the extent to which Maus now looms over his entire career--though given that he's not really done any substantive work since then, that's hardly surprising). Even when he does tell stories they are for the most part pretty self-conscious if not overtly meta. I'm more of a content than a form guy, though, so interesting as all the self-consciousness and formal play is, for me a little of it goes a long way. I'd also forgotten, since reading it in Maus, what a whiny, self-serving thing "Prisoner of the Hell Planet" is. Telling a story in which you characterize your concentration-camp-surviving mother's suicide as an act of murder against you . . . well, I suppose it expresses Spiegelman's emotional truth, but if so, words fail me. Anyway, this is an interesting if not superlative collection--to these eyes.

[Robin Burton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ll say to each their own... but I found the comic strips, well, stupid. Think in terms of shock value and humorless. Or at least, that’s my take.

I did manage to stick around for the author’s (very long) rambling of an afterword. Maybe I was too stuck in what I’d read in the comics, but I just didn’t care to read his life story or rationalizations for his writing “medium” as he calls it.

I haven’t read his more popular work ‘Maus’ yet and I’m not sure I want to anymore.

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was definitely very interesting to see different ideas and concepts that you normally don’t see in more mainstream comics. The underground comix influence is definitely there. I wasn’t a fan of the sexual imagery though.

[Stephen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Extravagant. Self-indulgent.

[ComicNerdSam · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE gold standard for experimental comics. Full of humor, innovation, pornography, fourth wall breaking, cubism, murder, satire, and other fun stuff!

[Alya AlShaibani · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5

[Dimitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating insight into Spiegelman's journey to become an artist. We see early works of Maus and we feel the rage Art used to propel the comix medium forward.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a reprint of Spiegelman’s early, strange, deconstructed and ignored Breakdowns from the 1978 that only produced 2500 copies (there were 5000, but half got ruined in the printing process because the printers didn’t know how to do their jobs right). It is an interesting collection that includes a forward and an afterword that does an incredible job contextualizing and presenting the work in a manner consistent with what his intentions and history were, but not only that, allow a gentle peek under the hood of how he developed the unique postmodern style he was experimenting with. Considering this, I had some favorite parts – notably “As The Mind Reels” (the soap opera strip) and Ace Hole were pretty amazing. My favorite was “The Malpractice Suite” - I could have read a thousand of those. Finally, the portion of the afterword named “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore: A Guided Tour” was spectacular as breaking down his editorial and visual choices in constructing a piece that at first glance was relatively simple but earth shattering when examined frame by frame.

This was a great book. Not likely visiting it again, but really enjoyed getting more of a look at an artist whose work has not only changed the world of literature with Maus, but who came from humble and edgy beginnings working for Topps, Mad, and some skin rags. Seeing a little more of his high school and college work as well as the places where he pushed the boundaries of the form in his early years was great.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

As others have discussed, “Prisoner on Hell Planet” and the original 3-page “Maus” are good. The stylistic variety is quite impressive, and I found the German Expressionist style chilling. I also found this book interesting when it came to better understanding some of the history around comics production and censorship.

However, outside of these two comics, I felt like most of these strips felt like pretentious meditations on what makes art “good art” vs “bad art” and I felt like Spiegelman (which he even addresses in his afterward) was trying deliberately to redefine what “good art” was rather than to use subversive forms to fit the narratives he was trying to tell.

A lot of the experimentation in this book didn’t feel like it did much at all to serve the purpose of the stories being told, and I ended up finishing most of these strips either confused, bored, or thinking “that was kind of sexist.”

This book was disappointing given how much of an impact Maus had on me (it’s the first comic book I ever read, and the book that showed me the depth of what comics could do). Breakdowns, on the other hand, is good drawing, but most of the stories in here either rely on stereotypes that make me cringe or fall flat.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breakdowns was Spiegelman's first book, put out in 1977, so this is a new edition of some old material. Spiegelman, however, does a new comic book introduction which is half as long as the original Breakdowns, so there's also plenty of new material. The best strips are the original three-page "Maus" and the classic "Hell Planet" strip that appears in the more famous, novel-length version of Maus. Most of the other strips are creative and formal experiments, and stylistic exercises. They're not engaging on a narrative level, but Spiegelman uses the medium in very impressive ways - his style is very elastic and allows him to play at noir, illustrate with a heavier, almost woodcut style, or work with Cubist images.

The new introduction is largely a meditation on creativity and elements of his childhood that shaped his professional and creative life, and the introduction is probably, for me, the best part of the entire book. It's impressive, but I can see why others might not really like it.

[Martín D. Herrera Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

La presente edición empieza con una historieta de 18 páginas, hecha para 2008. Un paseo autobiográfico desde la infancia, pasando por varios estilos de dibujo hasta... nunca encontrar el definitivo; porque de eso se trata: está siempre en la búsqueda y la experimentación.

Luego empieza la colección de historietas pre-Maus, que datan de la década del '70. El episodio piloto de "Maus" (con dibujos muy diferentes) y "Prisioneros del Planeta Infierno" (también incluida dentro de Maus), son dos historietitas blanco-negro soberbias. Luego dos cómics-tutoriales: uno sobre contar chistes y uno sobre historias de amor; y el resto es un buen surtido de planchas surrealistas, alocadas, complicadas, algunas coloreadas, más o menos graciosas, todas visualmente respetables.

Para mí (una humilde indigna opinión) es como si todo fuese una novela de aprendizaje del siglo XX, de esas que en vez de crecer para hallar la cordura, la pierden cada vez más. Siempre dejando clarísima una identidad y personalidad. La "sobriedad" llegará luego, con el otro famoso libro.

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s fascinating, not only because it faithfully records the aimless but clearly deeply driven desire of Spiegelman to reinvigorate cartooning but also because you can see the genesis of so many alternative comics’ artistic careers develop across the pages. Because comics as we now know it didn’t really exist beyond the late sixties boom, and most of that was - let’s face it - pretty much style over content (to be generous), there wasn’t really any idea of where to develop your style. So there are lots of things here which resolutely do not work, while there are others which feel like connecting tissues for whole sub genres. Whole careers seem to be based on styles tested out here, and the book’s real genius is that sense of someone determined to make their own statement but not entirely sure what that is yet. But Maus is all over this, literally and figuratively, and you sense it’s something Spiegelman had to get out of his system before he could create a masterpiece. It’s juvenilia but some of the most fascinating, electric and astonishing juvenilia you’ll ever see

[Lisenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich bin ja ein großer Freund von Art Spiegelman.
Die versammelten Comic-strips in "Breakdowns" zeugen von der Vielseitigkeit des Künstlers und regen Comicfreunde außerdem zu Detektivarbeit an. Welche Figuren hat er aus Comics anderer Künstler übernommen? Auf welchen Künstler spielt er an? Welchen Zeichenstil ahmt er gerade nach? Am meisten schätze ich an Spiegelman jedoch die autobiografischen Spuren, die er in seine Comics sät.
Was soll ich sagen, eine schöne Sammlung!
Abzug gibt es für die wirklich grottige deutsche Übersetzung. Was war da los? Ich habe das Gefühl, dass teilweise einfach Wort für Wort übersetzt wurde, ohne auf Satzbau oder Semantik zu achten. Wenn ich dann "Mein Vater war völlig auseinandergefallen!" lesen muss, dann möchte ich den oder die Übersetzer allesamt ins Slumberland schicken. Ja, wörtlich für "to fall apart" richtig, aber im Zusammenhang und ästhetisch einfach unter aller Kanone. Meine Augen!

[ilovecomics · Rating 5 out of 5]

Consigliato solo a chi già apprezza Spiegelman e desidera esplorare l’artista da giovane, qui spesso in versione sperimentale, di non sempre facile lettura.

Nonostante il materiale base di Breakdowns, pubblicato originariamente nel 1978, sia frammentario, per temi e per stile, ho dato 5 stelle a questo libro, per l’eccezionale personalità di Art Spiegelman, il suo straordinario amore per il fumetto come forma d’arte, la sua venerazione per il fumetto delle origini, la straordinaria consapevolezza sulle potenzialità del mezzo, che si riflette nelle bellissime introduzioni o postfazioni con cui accompagna i suoi disegni. Caso unico di un artista che in fondo ha scritto un solo libro, Maus, costato però 10 anni di lavoro, e con esso ha ridefinito per sempre le possibilità del mezzo.

Artista di matrice underground che non ci lascia mai indifferenti, anche per un frammento apparentemente insignificante. Di lui apprezzo l'infinito amore per il dettaglio, il fumetto viene trattato con la stessa dignità di un’opera d’arte in un museo, ogni vignetta, ogni disegno, se guardato con attenzione, rivela un'infinita di particolari ricchi di senso.

Anche il progetto grafico delle sue opere è straordinariamente curato, incluso il formato, spesso large, in questo caso extra large. Tenere in mano un suo libro è anche un piacere fisico.

[Gabrielle Danoux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Planches publiées entre 2002 et 2003 dans différents journaux (Die Zeit, le Courrier International, The Independent). La BD ne vit le jour en tant qu'album grand format (34,8 × 24,5 cm) qu'en 2004. Il s'agit d'une réflexion, très originale à mon sens, sur les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 et l'impact qu'ils ont eu sur le comportement des Américains, l'artiste compris. «Je voulais refaire de la B.D. Après tout, ma muse s'appelle Désastre», dit-il en insistant sur le «Dropping the other shoe», expression idiomatique américaine utilisée pour exprimer l'attente d'un événement prévisible et théoriquement inéluctable. Après le gant de Kant (heureusement que j'ai corrigé : le logiciel de reconnaissance vocale avait mis Cantona) le chaussure (seconde) du «vaudeville étymologique». Lui qui n'aurait jamais porté un T-shirt I ♥ NY éprouva soudain de la tendresse pour ses rues familières et vulnérables qui ont trouvé la force de se reconstruire.

[Kaitlyn Novotny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Art, especially comics, is a tough genre to critique. So personal, so subjective. This collection of works in particular feels like peeling back a few layers of the onion that is Spiegelman and trying to understand his personal origins, as a person and as an artist, where he was often found to be between the rock and the proverbial hard place of creating his own "art" but having to abide by the current market demands of the day. Some setups feel like him working through his own therapy sessions, some feel like intrusive thoughts given legitimacy by putting pen to paper. It gave me the sense that, in general, the world of graphic artists is a tangle of hormones, confusion, and selfishness--all laid out to seem relatable and poignant to the average reader. I can't say I gleaned as much as I expected from this memoir of works and would have liked more context or maybe a wider array of work to thumb through.

[Alamein · Rating 5 out of 5]

le genre de bd qui donne envie de faire de la bd (et prendre un max de drogue), j'aime bcp bcp (sauf la dernière bd, ça prend un peu la tête en vrai)


"Au total, la vie revient à rien. L'accoutumance dévore œuvres, vêtements, meubles, épouses, et peur de la guerre. Et l'art n'existe que pour retrouver la sensation de vivre, pour ressentir les choses, pour sentir le sol solide. Le propos de l'art est de faire sentir les choses telles qu'elles sont perçues et non pas reconnues. La technique propre à l'art : rendre les objets "non familiers", les formes plus complexes, pour augmenter la difficulté et la durée de la perception. Car le processus de perception est une fin esthétique en soi, qui doit être prolongée. L'art est un moyen d'éprouver la dimension artistique d'un objet : l'objet n'est pas important."
-Victor Chklovsky

[Bradley Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in 1978, the legendary Pulitzer Prize winning comic artist’s early underground and avant-garde work is collected here, showcasing his raw and unfiltered talent. Before the publication of “Maus,” the graphic memoir documenting his family’s experiences during Nazi occupation and in Auschwitz that would earn him wide acclaim, Spiegelman’s comic work during the 1970s offers a compelling look into the development of one of the most daring and innovative artists of the 20th century. Shocking and provocative, it’s a brilliant collection that proves comics are not just for kids. Featuring a new intro and afterword, this collection provides a context that frames the place this work occupies in Spiegelman’s legacy.

[Ramon]

This is a fascinating and hard to penetrate collection of Spiegelman's work, both providing a lot of insight into him in the 60s and 70s and also none at all. There's some fascinating deconstruction of humor and comics in here, and some very fun surreal stuff that I didn't really have the patience for, so I didn't really appreciate it as much as maybe I should have.

It was a library find, otherwise I doubt I would have picked it up. It feels like a demo tape of your favorite band that they made in high school, where you can recognize all the things that make them great artists, the artists that you love, but if you've only heard their stuff on the radio, this isn't going to do anything for you.

[Susannah Breslin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art Spiegelman’s Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! is perfect for those who want to remind themselves that a masterpiece starts as something less than that. A reprint, with an expansive new introduction, of work published early in his career, this collection contains the seeds of what will become the author’s greatest work: Maus. From a one-page strip version of Maus to the arresting “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” in which he grapples with his mother’s suicide, these are the experimental steps that were required for Spiegelman to create the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. Oversized, colorful, dazzling.

[ashes ➷ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd recommend this to two groups of people: Spiegelman fans and Comics Are An Art Form people. Happily, I am both, so I enjoyed it quite a bit. It showcases primarily Spiegelman's early work, much of which is very in-your-face with the "I am a man who has just learned I can draw boobies and get money for it" sort of shock value mentality. That said, this is worth picking up just for Prisoner from a Hell Planet, Day at the Circuits, and of course the original Maus piece. It is a GORGEOUS book at its size; every page is detailed and beautiful. Very, very happy to own it.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

If the art weren't so good, I would not have given 3 stars. I can't really say that I recommend this book, mostly because I don't get it. It seems to be a semi-autobiographical and experimental art exercise. Spiegelman is a great artist and writer, but a lot of what is in this book didn't make sense to me. The afterword was definitely worth reading as it explained the evolution of Spiegelman's career. Also, there is a short graphic essay titled Cracking Jokes that gives an explanation of humor that is also worth reading.