Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker, where he made several high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to designer and editor

Spiegelman was born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 15, 1948. He immigrated with his parents to the US in 1951. Upon immigration his name was registered as Arthur Isadore, but he later had his given name changed to Art. Initially the family settled in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and then relocated to Rego Park in Queens, New York City, in 1957. He began cartooning in 1960 and imitated the style of his favorite comic books, such as Mad. At Russell Sage Junior High School, where he was an honors student, he produced the Mad-inspired fanzine Blase. He was earning money from his drawing by the time he reached high school and sold artwork to the original Long Island Press and other outlets. His talent was such that he caught the eyes of United Features Syndicate, who offered him the chance to produce a syndicated comic strip. Dedicated to the idea of art as expression, he turned down this commercial opportunity. He attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan beginning in 1963. He met Woody Gelman, the art director of Topps Chewing Gum Company, who encouraged Spiegelman to apply to Topps after graduating high school. At 15 Spiegelman received payment for his work from a Rego Park newspaper.  After his graduation in 1965, Spiegelman's parents urged him to pursue the financial security of a career such as dentistry, but he chose instead to enroll at Harpur College to study art and philosophy. While there, he got a freelance art job at Topps, which provided him with an income for the next two decades.  Spiegelman attended Harpur College from 1965 until 1968, where he worked as staff cartoonist for the college newspaper and edited a college humor magazine. After a summer internship when he was 18, Topps hired him for Gelman's Product Development Department as a creative consultant making trading cards and related products in 1966, such as the Wacky Packages series of parodic trading cards begun in 1967.  Spiegelman began selling self-published underground comix on street corners in 1966. He had cartoons published in underground publications such as the East Village Other and traveled to San Francisco for a few months in 1967, where the underground comix scene was just beginning to burgeon.  In late winter 1968 Spiegelman suffered a brief but intense nervous breakdown, which cut his university studies short. He has said that at the time he was taking LSD with great frequency. He spent a month in Binghamton State Mental Hospital, and shortly after he got out his mother committed suicide following the death of her only surviving brother.

Answer the following question by taking a quote from the article: Prior to the New Yorker job, were any of his works controversial?