"Over the past century, tans have elevated comics from the back pages of newspapers into one of our most celebrated forms of culture, from Fun Home, the Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel's groundbreaking graphic memoir, to the dozens of superhero films that are annual blockbusters worldwide. What is the essence of comics' appeal? What does this art form do that others can't? Whether you've read every comic you can get your hands on...

"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman is one of our most influential contemporary artists, and it is hard to overstate his effect on postwar American culture. Maus has shaped the fields of literature, history, and art, and enlivened our collective sense of what these practices can accomplish. [This book] collects responses to the work that confirm its unique and terrain-shifting status. Here, writers such as Philip Pullman, Robert Storr, Ruth...