On this day in Comic History: Art Spiegelman was born in 1948.

Art Spiegelman is a comic man, through and through. He spent time working in the underground scene of the 1970s on comic magazines like Arcade and Raw. But perhaps Art is best known as the author and artist on Maus a true story about his Jewish father living through the Holocaust (starring animals). Maus is one of the most critically acclaimed comic works of all time and is thought by many to have gifted comics with a certain “legitimacy” (though those of us that have been around know better than that). Still, it is a rare thing for a black and white comic to regularly be taught in schools as part of a larger curriculum or as a class itself, and if nothing else, the work should be respected on that level.

And Art things everyone should read comics, so he can’t be all that bad in the end.

Happy birthday Mr. Spiegelman!