Fellow blogger THE COMICS REPORTER is down today, as Tom Spurgeon has been posting on several message boards. He also reports that

…Art Spiegelman withdrew his work from the half of the Masters of American Comics Exhibit running at the Jewish Museum. This was confirmed to CR by one of the other artists involved and the Director of Communications at the Jewish Museum, and one assumes will be reported in most NY media sources covering the show, starting today.


which is interesting. Maybe they can put Dale Messick in his place.

Now the site is back, and you can read Tom’s full report here, complete with speculation:

A phone call to Speigelman’s studio on Thursday afternoon was not immediately returned. The consensus of the rumors — emphasis on rumors — was that the withdrawl was in part due to the Jerry Robinson guest-curated “Good and Evil in American Comics,” exhibit also running at the Jewish Museum. Whether that’s true, and if so what the nature of those objections might be, we will try to explore here by talking to the cartoonist or if that’s not possible than linking to his statements to other sources.