Art Spiegelman's

An anthropomorphic rat: a thin, slightly hunched young man exuding tension, dressed in casual, urban clothing from the 1970s and 1980s, such as button-down shirts and simple t-shirts, while a cigarette is almost always lit in his mouth, the smoke serving as a graphic extension of his constant anxiety.

Art Spiegelman presents himself to the world in a stripped-down and unfiltered way, revealing a personality deeply marked by chronic neuroses, anxiety, and depression, but also by an implacable intellectual honesty. Shaped by the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust and the tragic suicide of his mother in 1968, he carries a heavy survivor's guilt, constantly feeling inferior to the real suffering of his parents and the untouchable memory of his deceased brother, Richieu. In his daily and professional life, this pain translates into fierce self-criticism and artistic pragmatism, where he refuses to romanticize himself or history, shamelessly exposing his impatience, selfishness, and the exhausting conflicts he maintained with his father, Vladek.