Vancouver Art Gallery’s Art Spiegelman retrospective proves there’s much more to comics than Archie & Betty and childhood superheroes. 

The Vancouver Art Gallery’s current exhibit, CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps, showcases artist Art Spiegelman, whose innovative use of the comic strip– as a tool for social commentary and to fearlessly intervene in high-stakes political, aesthetic and cultural issues– leaves nothing off limits.

The underground “comix” movement of the seventies in San Francisco ignited Spiegelman’s career. During this time Spiegelman published in diverse styles in Short Order Comix, co-edited and published in Arcade, and worked as a cartoonist for Playboy. Spiegelman was also employed by the candy company Topps as a designer of trading cards and stickers. In typical Spiegelman style, this meant producing designs that criticized consumerist culture even as it paid his bills.

There is so much to see in this exhibit, and if you look closely, you will be rewarded with the most “comical” of comic jabs. My favourite work, “The Comics Historian,” combines unlikely comic characters in a critique on the erosion of the cartoon craft. Spiegelman’s witty dialogue between Charlie Brown and the Peanuts, Popeye, characters from Southpark, and his own Maus mice are a clever juxtaposition of mass-market, lowbrow erotica, and coterie comics: the so-called “co-mix.” Fast-forward to Spiegelman’s work today and you will find him designing children’s books such as “Open me … I’m a Dog!” with a much more refined and censored style.

After providing a critical foundation in his juvenilia and the early work for Topps, the VAG’s exhibit launches right into the highlight of Spiegelman’s international career: Maus. This thirteen-year project skyrocketed Spiegelman to success and has since become his best-known work. A deeply personal artist, Spiegelman turns to his own adversity for inspiration in his works, and Maus is no exception. Weaving the threads of two narratives, one of a father and son, and the other of the Holocaust, Maus retells history. This graphic novel was revolutionary because it did something that had never been done, which is to combine reality and autobiographical material to enter into the world of comics. The VAG dedicates the largest chunk of the exhibit to Maus, with pages mounted like canvases on each of the walls and numerous sketches showing his artistic process.

Spiegelman’s influence on the art world cannot be overstated. He and his wife’s creation of RAW magazine, which was recognized as the leading avant-garde comix magazine of its era, brought together American, European and Japanese up-and-coming cartoonists in order to give them exposure.  This lead to recognition of artists such as Robert Crumb and shone the spotlight on up and coming cartoonists. His ongoing conversation with contemporary politics creates bold, sometimes controversial pieces. These dialogues come head-to-head in his cover for The New Yorker titled “Valentine’s Day” in 1993 and later “Ground Zero” following the events of September 11, 2001. In total his twenty one covers for The New Yorker are admirable for their intentionally scandalous say-it-how-it-is attitude. I highly recommend taking a close look at the “Ground Zero” cover and the series of incomplete covers for RAW; they are brilliant.

The VAG does a fantastic job showcasing Spiegelman’s artistic progression and ongoing experimentation. I would advise visitors to imagine the show as a manifestation of his Breakdowns: Portrait of an Artist as a Young %@?*! 2008 series, which was a sort of retrospective of his earlier series Breakdowns. Viewed this way, the exhibit not only builds up the successes of this artist but it also tears him down, revealing the intimate moments, scraping away the layers to find brilliance in the flaws. A culmination of the scraps of his artistic genius, Spiegelman is remarkably diverse and is sure to grab hold of your own artistic imagination.

The exhibition is running February 16 – June 9 2013.