Art Spiegelman and the Refugee Ship Blues

The potential for the power of the visual image is demonstrated by this recent editorial comic strip in the Washington Post by Maus cartoonist Art Spiegelman. The strip focuses on American editorial cartoonists’ response to the arrival (and subsequent denial of entry) of a shipload of 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 (the notorious Voyage of the Damned), but it also manages to encompass commentary on the current crisis for US immigrants and the decline of the modern American editorial cartoonist. This decline in numbers of full time employed artists in the United States tends to mirror the fall in readers of print media.

Image Clipping © Art Spiegelman for The Washington Post