This legendary 1978 collection of comics by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the best-selling Maus, presents the seminal early works that changed how comics are made and appreciated today—now with a new Afterword by the author.

“Some of the smartest criticism of the comics genre ever rendered.” —NPR

Innovative, serious, funny, and many decades ahead of its time, Breakdowns is offered here in its entirety: the long-sought-after collection of the artist’s comics of the 1970s, along with an introduction almost as long as the book it introduces—and just as autobiographically intimate and experimentally daring.

At once the story of an artist and of his medium, Breakdowns alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.