Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can can read hello and welcome to bookworm

this is Michael Silverblatt and it's a very unusual show in that we have three

guests this season witnesses an incredible flowering in the field of comic

books they've become comic book novels.

And I have the writer, artists of two of the most extraordinary of this not exactly

new genre, but I guess new to the appearance to the public via publication by Pantheon novels.

Those are Chris Ware, the author of Jimmy Corrigan,

The Smartest Kid on Earth, and Daniel Klaus, the author of David Boring.

The books both come from Pantheon and with them is the designer, co-editor of both books.

Chip Kidd, who is well known as an award-winning graphic artist who has altered the way books, particularly books from

Alfred A. Knopf, are looking nowadays. I wanted to begin. Can you fill me in on how it was,

how it came to be, that we now have graphic novels of this length and integrity and

complexity.

What's the history here?

Daniel Klaus?

I guess for me, the first thing I would think of in the world of graphic novels would be

Art Spiegelman's Mouse, which,

what, the first volume of that came out in, what, the mid-80s, early 80s.

...