Spiegelman's ghostly New Yorker cover
By Todd Leopold
CNN
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Art Spiegelman's black-on-black September 11 New Yorker cover was actually a "side thought," he says.
"I was trying to fix something I thought was better," he says, holding up a poster depicting the towers covered in a black drape looming over the finely detailed prewar apartment blocks of a blue-sky downtown New York.
"[But] this was just wrong. ... So I was beginning to dim the sky down to gray and make the buildings gray ... and Francoise [Mouly, his wife and The New Yorker's arts editor] is saying 'This isn't working.'
"And I [thought] ... what's the least that could be said. So black on black," he recalls. "And then I thought that was one of my many temper tantrums and was going to get back to work, and Francoise said, 'No, you've got it. Let it go.' "
The other cover was eventually used for a book, "110 Stories."
