For the last decade, artist, animator, illustrator and performer R Sikoryak has been putting America’s founding documents into conversation with iconic images and characters from comics and cartoons. 

That started with the Constitution — “there’s a document everyone says you should read and I wanted to make it readable by adding visuals” — and his new book, Declaration / Emancipation Illustrated, continues with those two documents along with the Gettysburg Address. 

In a wide-ranging conversation with Lit NYC host Harry Siegel, Sikoryak talks about getting to New York, cutting his teeth at Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s underground cartoon anthology Raw and its ‘Narrative Corpse,” his Masterpiece Comics like Batman’s Crime and Punishment and Charlie Brown’s Metamorphosis, and much more.