Career low and light points

During Art Spiegelman’s lustrous career, he has achieved some of the highest recognition a graphic novelist can achieve. Winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and countless other awards it’s easy to say Art Spiegelman had a very successful career. Although it appears Spiegelman had fame and success, the man went through many struggles as an artist in his early drawing career and even after the release of Maus. Spiegelman suffered from many nervous and mental breakdowns and in 1968 was issued into a mental hospital. A good example of his mental history can be found in the novel “Portait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!”The story is told by his girlfriend Isabella in the late 1960’s.

 “

     Art had a nervous breakdown in early 1968 (around the time of Martin Luther King's assassination). He went without sleeping for about five days. He and I (age 17, up till then a friend more than a lover) had a very deeply honest and profound discussion and he became very "hopped up" on honesty and truth. 
He then began to believe that he was the savior of his friends, perhaps of all humanity. We feel deeply in love-- yet, he was going temporarily mad (no eating or drinking water, either). 
I could not stay awake with him; my body simply could not keep up; but I didn't sleep much. Much of this is in his own work though I am not named. He began to challenge his friends on every level, and at one point tried to strangle me and then to throw me off the inner balcony of the house in which we and some roommates were living at the time (Binghamton, NY). 
At this point his friends and I decided that we needed to take him to a hospital, but we wanted it to be a "physical hospital" -- that is, not a mental hospital. However, once we had somehow convinced him to have the people at the college clinic have a look; it was out of our hands. He was placed in a mental hospital and was there for a week or more. His parents came to see if he was all right. He tried to force me to find a way to get him out and was furious when I could not. His parents sent me home to my own family (at that time in Florida). I was seventeen and madly in love with his power and energy--in spite of his "Jesus" complex and his passionate anger. 
I went to Florida, but I returned as soon as I could. He was better, but sadly, his mother shortly thereafter (May 20, 1968) killed herself while we were spending the weekend together (this also is in his work, in MAUS, Prisoner on the Hell Planet). 
I loved Art for many years and I believe he also loved me. We were separated for about five years, during which I had a child. Then we got back together, but shortly thereafter, Françoise Mouly became his lover and wife. We remained friends for many years.”- Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!-2008

Spiegelman also had many issues in his early career with the Bubble Gum Company Topps, where he interned at the age of 18. After working at Topps as a staff writer-artist-editor in Woody Gelman's Product Development Department, Spiegelman invented Garbage Candy (candy in the form of garbage, sold in miniature plastic garbage cans), the Wacky Packages card series, Garbage Pail Kids and countless other hugely successful creations. After 20 years of demanding Topps to reward the creators a percentage of the profits, Topps refused. Spiegelman, who had appointed Topps work to many of his cartoonist friends or students, left over the contention of creative ownership and ownership of artwork. In 1989 Topps auctioned off the original artwork they had gathered over the decades and kept the profits.

Spiegelman also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following the attacks on 9/11 and left his job as the cover illustrator for The New Yorker Magazine after publishing a top ten of magazine covers of the past 40 years as voted by the American Society of Magazine Editors. He later published a graphic novel called “In the Shadow of No Towers”, the comic unfolded Spiegelman's experiences during the 9/11 attacks. The Comic describes, the smoke in Manhattan smelled just like his father said the smoke in the concentration camps smelled.

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!. Pantheon, 2008. ISBN 978-0-375-42395-6

In the Shadow of No Towers-Art Spiegelman-2002

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20094864,00.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_was_Art_Spiegelman_in_a_mental_hospital