FRANCOISE MOULY

Mouly discusses the history of comics, the value of cartoons, The New Yorker, RAW Magazine, and her list of recommended reading.

Françoise Mouly has been art editor of The New Yorker since 1993. Since then, she has been responsible for over 800 covers, including the magazine's most memorable in recent years: the September 11, 2001 black cover (which she created with her husband, cartoonist Art Spiegelman) and the controversial "terrorist fist bump" cover by Barry Blitt during the 2008 election. For the 85th anniversary of the magazine, in 2010, she did a 4-part cover by Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine and Ivan Brunetti. Very cool.

2001: Black on Black, The September 11 cover

2008: "The Terrorist Fist-Bump"

In 2000, Mouly published “Covering The New Yorker: Cutting-Edge Covers from a Literary Institution,” and launched a RAW Junior division to publish books of comics for kids. In 2001, she was named chevalier in the order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.

Back in 1980, she and her husband Art Spiegelman started the new wave comic anthology RAW, which showcased a wild crew of post-mod cartoonists from Europe and the United States. Some saw it as the artsy, intellectual, New York counterpoint to Robert Crumb's Weirdo anthology, but Crumb himself published work in its oversized pages--and he wasn't alone. RAW artists included Gary Panter, Chris Ware, Justin Green, Julie Doucet, Charles Burns, Bill Griffith, Sue Coe, Kim Deitch, Lynda Barry, Robert Sikoryak, Ben Katchor, Kaz and many more. RAW first published Art Spiegelman's MAUS, the graphic story of his parents' experiences in the Holocaust, which later won the Pulitzer Prize.

Mouly and Spiegelman back in the day