Never Again!.. And Again... And Again...

“Never Again!.. And Again… And Again… And Again” is a 3 page collaborative story by Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco first published in The New York Review of Books (February 2025) and reprinted in major outlets like Le 1 Hebdo, The Guardian, and El País. It's also reprinted in 100 dessins pour Gaza.

This is a prelim by Art Spiegelman for page 2 panel 6. Interestingly most parts of this prelim bear more resemblance to the published art than the final art e.g. shoe, glasses, chair, hand and glass, the table, server even the mouse figure... (see extra images). You can play the game of seven differences if you want... It seems Art Spiegelman still wasn't happy with the final version of this panel and kept on changing it.

In this panel you can see Art Spiegelman's alter ego and Joe Sacco (on the left) conversing.
The text in the published art reads: "It made sense for Jews to want a homeland, but Israel may be a failed experiment."

The art comes with a signed "collector edition" of the story (see extra images).

Thanks to Galerie Martel for giving me the opportunity to acquire this art!

Art Spiegelman about his creative process:
"Basically I have to torture myself; drawing does not come very naturally to me, doodling does."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhvXLgodDnE 22:35


Interview in the New York Review of Books with Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco about this "graphic conversation":
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/08/cant-go-on-must-go-on-joe-sacco-art-spiegelman/
Art Spiegelman: "I’ve been trying to find some way to engage and comment on what’s been going on in Israel and Palestine, feeling that I couldn’t really sit back as a noncombatant, ducking and covering while this was happening."


Interview with Art Spiegelman in Hyperallergic:
https://hyperallergic.com/art-spiegelman-is-learning-how-to-do-this-comics-thing-again/
H: How did your recent collaboration with Joe Sacco for a comic about Gaza come together? What was the process of making it?
Art Spiegelman: "Well, it started as me whining to Joe over the phone about how I had spent a year turning totally into an interview subject, talking about book banning and first amendments and whatever. I became a go-to talking head for such things. By the end of the year, I totally stopped drawing, and it was very hard to get back to drawing comics again; it's not like getting back on a bicycle. I was trying to find tricks to make myself do any kind of work, and Joe kindly said, "Well, right now I'm running on all cylinders because I just finished four years on a book about India. Why don't we get together and jam?" “Jamming” means drawing on the same paper as someone, passing it back and forth and seeing what comes of it. That was an offer I couldn't refuse. I did that a lot in the age of underground comics, and I always learned from it, because you find out how people think and work by working in proximity.
This could have become that, but it changed before it started because we started having in-depth conversations about Gaza. At a certain point, my wife intervened and said, "Do this on Zoom so you can record it and listen back to what you've been saying.” It was ultimately four hours of conversation, which we refined to the three pages for that piece. We had to figure out how much we could squeeze into such a small space and cover a lot of material. And then Joe came out and we began to make some drawings together, with each of us tackling a different panel or passing something back and forth, or me making a thumbnail sketch and him developing that.
I'm learning how to do this comics thing again, and I'll be damned if I'm going to draw the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So we horse-traded who did what as we proceeded: “Horses are hard, and you can do them really well. I saw the thing you did about World War I. I'll tell you what, your caricature of Netanyahu isn't that great. Neither is my first stab at it; he's hard to draw. But how about if I do that Netanyahu panel in exchange for you doing the horses?” Joe did the lettering, I did the coloring, and it became a very fluid conversation. It took nine months, so it was like giving birth. And I think the only reason people ever have more than one kid is because the mother forgets how painful it is. So this gave me a kickstart toward making some comics again."


For those with a little more time (and wanting to conquer the ever-changing world of Youtube and
streaming platforms) I can recommend the PBS American Masters documentary Art Spiegelman: "Disaster Is My Muse". Ironically this documentary also digging into censorship and book banning has been censored...
https://www.pbs.org/video/art-spiegelman-disaster-is-my-muse-kqfn5y/