Last night, Art Spiegelman stopped by the Centre for Digital Media -- something about a distinguished speaker series we're cohosting with the Vancouver Art Gallery for their exhibition KRAZY? It didn't ring any bells at first, but helpful coworkers were quick to remind me that I'd been involved in preparing for the Second Life component of two sessions, had created promotional graphics for the events, and had in fact been talking about it for a while. Suddenly, it all came back to me.

I have a limited familiarity with Art Spiegelman's works -- I've read Maus, seen some of his contributions to the New Yorker, but I wouldn't say I'm a fan, just that I've been impressed by his work, but wouldn't necessarily be able to give you a bibliography any longer than what I've just written.

That said, I was interested to hear Art speak, as one would naturally hope to be at the opportunity to attend a talk given by someone considered to be a master in his field. Oh, to go back in time and give Yesterday's Catherine a piece of my mind! It turns out that Art Spiegelman is a highly engaging public speaker, seemingly as at ease onstage as he presumably is with a pencil.

At the reception after his talk, a fellow audience member remarked that, having never heard Art speak before, she wondered if he might fall into the category of artists who do one thing really, really well, leaving minutia such as public speaking or other such trivialities to people who don't pour everything they have into one single skill.

Rest assured, Art did not suffer from any such problem.

I suppose though, comics are very much a multidisciplinary medium, which makes him a particularly apt choice to open the KRAZY!Talk speakers series, given what we do here at the Centre for Digital Media.

There are comic writers and artists and inkers and letterers and story editors, but it's impressive to see someone who can do all of these well -- and hey, he can give a good lecture too.

Art started off by leaping into a history of comics, starting from the first historical explorations of the medium, leading to what are more traditionally considered to be pioneering comics such as The Yellow Kid. The bulk of his talk consisted of an analysis of a wide range of comics through the 20th Century, ranging from Krazy Kat to Little Nemo in Slumberland to Peanuts. Many of these, we were assured, "should have been in the show." [1]

I'm happy to say that I recognized very nearly all the "...who should have been in the shows", but missed a couple references to some of the comics he was somewhat more critical of. I understand why it's important to be aware of "bad" media in order to appreciate "good" media, but I sensed that I was perhaps not missing much from some of the examples he cited.

When Art began talking about comics published after he'd been born, his lecture changed in tone from an analysis of art to how it made him feel, how he was inspired upon seeing his first copy of Mad Magazine, reading in part from panels taken from Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!.

At the brief Q&A session, ("I'm being asked 'why mice?' yet again") one audience member asked Art about his thoughts on webcomics. [2] (Did he have any? Was he at all familiar with these newfangled intertube things?) Art graciously responded with what was perhaps the most insightful perspective I've heard from a "traditional" comics artist: rather than deride those horrible online comics for not being "real art", he explained that what he likes about paper comic books is that they're a completely contained experience.

What's he talking about? Well, consider the previous link. VQR Online has encapsulated an excerpt from a graphic novel in a web page -- and they've done so remarkably generously. Nowhere around the actual comic itself does one find any distracting content, competing for our attention. You seldom find anywhere near that level of devotion to actual content on the front page of an actual webcomic. Perhaps webcomic authors can take something away from this -- and perhaps not. I know I had to actually look at that page carefully to notice the absence of banner ads and navigation boxes and calendars around Art's comic.

Interestingly, I think Art has a lot in common with webcomic artists; certainly more than most "traditional" comics artists, in that virtually all online comics are produced by a single person, acting as writer, director and artist, all in one. Particularly with much of his autobiographical content, there's really little other way he could put it out there.

I wished I'd had the opportunity to ask him about the contrast between comic books and comic strips -- the latter seem to have more in common with constraints of space and forced distractions surrounding them.

In any event, I thought it went really well. I was pleased that on the first hot day we've had in Vancouver this year (yes, 21 degrees Celsius is hot, thank you) The Hangar, one of the Centre for Digital Media's gigantic warehouse spaces, hosted a sold-out, 300-plus audience and was neither too hot nor too cold. It turns out that it's hard to iron all the bugs out when trying to retrofit a modern HVAC system onto a 50-year-old factory.

I'll also be attending the other three KRAZY!Talk sessions, and if they're even half as fascinating as Art's talk was, they'll have been well worth it. (I understand this Will Wright fellow to be in some way related to video games or some such.)

There are still tickets available, so if you're interested, consult our Calendar to find out where to get some.

[1] In the world of Art Spiegelman, "so-and-so, who should have been in the show," seems to be very high praise.

[2] I'll confess, I read about 20 webcomics regularly. Actual graphic novels? Basically never. Sorry, everyone.