"I resist becoming the Elie Wiesel of the comic book," Art Spiegelman once said. Too bad! Just as the name Wiesel will be forever linked with Night and other Holocaust literature, so the name Spiegelman will be forever suffixed with "You know, that guy who drew the comic book about Auschwitz." It doesn't matter what else he does. He can draw a graphic memoir of 9/11 starring the Katzenjammer Kids (In the Shadow of No Towers). He can write and publish charming kids' books (Jack and the Box and Open Me… I'm a Dog!). He can crucify the Easter Bunny on the cover of The New Yorker. It just doesn't matter.

What was Spiegelman like before his epitaph was set? Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, a reissue of a 1978 collection of Spiegelman's strips beginning in 1972 (including some pages from an early version of Maus), is a portrait of the artist as a young man scrambling for material.