 Seeing Green 's revealingly autobiographical Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary while in @-@ progress in 1971 inspired Spiegelman to produce " Prisoner on the Hell Planet " , an expressionistic work that dealt with his mother 's suicide ; it appeared in 1972 in Short Order Comix # 1 , which he edited . Spiegelman 's work thereafter went through a phase of increasing formal experimentation ; the Apex Treasury of Underground Comics in 1974 quotes him : " As an art form the comic strip is barely in its infancy . So am I. Maybe we 'll grow up together . " The often @-@ reprinted " Ace Hole , Midget Detective " of 1974 was a Cubist @-@ style nonlinear parody of hardboiled crime fiction full of non sequiturs . " A Day at the Circuits " of 1975 is a recursive single @-@ page strip about alcoholism and depression in which the reader follows the character through multiple never @-@ ending pathways . " Nervous Rex : The Malpractice Suite " of 1976 is made up of cut @-@ out panels from the soap @-@ opera comic strip Rex Morgan , M.D. refashioned in such a way as to defy coherence . 
