Today's Spiegelman sighting: The Portland, Ore., Oregonian also reviews Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers:

"On a first read-through, No Towers plays like a fever dream of formal experiments. In every strip, Spiegelman settles on a theme (family, politics, paranoia, pollution) and then riffs on it using three or four different art styles -- jamming together influences ranging from R. Crumb to turn-of-the-century newspaper comics. He's spent the past several years separating words and pictures -- writing essays and doing covers for The New Yorker -- and seeing him bring them back together with this much assurance is exhilarating.

"Unfortunately, Spiegelman is trying to vacuum-pack the entire scope of the 9/11 malaise into 10 comic strips, and his success varies, depending on which facet of the tragedy he's exploring. When he sticks to personal experiences, No Towers is sublimely moving."