The Virginia Quarterly Review is serializing Art Spiegelman's next major work, which is a series of self-reflective commentaries on his first collection of comics, Breakdowns, which was published in 1977 and long out of print.  Pantheon wanted to republish Breakdowns and Spiegelman decided to revisit and comment on those early works with a series of new strips, which the VQR is publishing under the title, Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&?!.  In the Fall 2005 issue of VQR, which is due out in early October, Spiegelman presents his account of the creation of his 'Prisoner of the Hell Planet' story, originally published in Short Order Comix #2 back in 1972.  The 12-page story will be accompanied by a poster-size reprint of Prisoner of the Hell Planet.

Retailers interested in carrying the Virginia Quarterly Review can contact the magazine directly (for a 40% returnable discount) or purchase copies through a number of distributors including Ingram Periodical, Ubiquity Distributors and DeBoer.