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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Thomas Jones. This week I'm

talking to the legendary cartoonist Art Spiegelman, the author of Mouse and in the Shadow of No

Towers, and creator and editor of many other comic books and cartoon strips, some of which have appeared in the LLB. His most recent work is a collaboration

with the writer Robert Kuva, a book called Street Cop, published by Isolari. Hello, Art, and thank you

very much for joining me. Oh, thanks for having me, Tom. Street cop describes an eventful day, I think it's one day,

in the life of an anonymous street cop in an anonymous futuristic, phantasmagorical city.

There are robot cops, there's a spaceport, there are devices that enable people to float in the air,

and have sex in midair, zombie pet shops,

and the city itself is radically unstable with space and time all mixed up somehow, and holds streets being

3D printed in recyclable thermoplastics. There's sex and violence and lawlessness,

and the cops are just another racket among many rackets. It's a dystopian satire, but not just

satire.

Then, Art, what was it about Koova's story that made you want to illustrate it? What drew you to draw it?

Well, I got contacted out of the blue right after I'd gotten up here to this log cabin I'm in.

Without any real agenda, except I'm working on a, I can't talk much about it, but I'm working on a pilot for

a TV series, collaborating on it. And that uses one part of my brain. I don't know if it's left,

right, top, or bottom, but it's not the same as drawing. And my drawing hand was really beginning

...