WHAT THE %@&*! HAPPENED TO COMICS? >>>

Ask 12 serious comic book fans what their favorite stories are, and you're likely to get 12-or more-different answers. But ask the same dozen for the works that truly elevated the medium, in content, scope and respectability, and you'll land on a few. Watchmen. The Dark Knight Returns. Maus: A Survivor's Tale.

Art Spiegelman was a professional cartoonist for 20 years before the first volume of Maus was published in 1986. The second volume came in 1991, and with it something new for comics-literary respect. Maus quickly became the first of only two graphic novels awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Were this the only thing Spiegelman had accomplished, it would still be enough for a place as one of the comic book medium's most influential creators. But in a career closing in on 50 years in the making, it marks just one facet of his experience in the industry.

Does anyone remember the Garbage Pail Kids? Weird cards of bizarrely twisted Cabbage Patch parodies? That was Spiegelman, during his 20-year stint as a developer for Topps. How about the memorial cover that ran on the Sept. 24, 2001 cover of The New Yorker? Again, Spiegelman. In recent years, and in a departure from the adult themes of Maus - though I read it in elementary school, so there's that - Spiegelman began work on the Little Lit series, with the tag "Comics: Not just for adults".

All this makes Speigelman one of the best-qualified men in the country to give a lecture on the history, state and future of graphic storytelling. And on Thursday night you will find him doing just that at Puyallup's Liberty Theatre.

Pierce College will be presenting Spiegelman's touring lecture, "What The %@&*! Happened To Comics?" Thursday night. Some tickets are still available through Ticketmaster.

[Liberty Theater, Thursday, March 4, 7 p.m., $12, 116 W. Main Ave., Puyallup, 253.864.8116]