05/09/2012 ... and it was still warm. Francoise Mouly, art editor at the New Yorker and editor/compiler of the new book, Blown Covers , featuring art that never made the cover, has posted this strip, a 1993 collaboration between her husband, Art Spiegelman, and Maurice Sendak, who died yesterday. I've  said in the past that I prefer Marc Chagall to Salvador Dali, because Dali is constantly saying "Wow! Look at this!" while Chagall says, "Let me tell you a story ..." Sendak is somewhere between the two, gently inviting you to hear a story and simultaneously flashing something extraordinary in your face. And I think his better work lands closer to Chagall on the continuum, that the more conscious he becomes, the more the artist emerges from behind the work, and thus the less successful he is. Another thing I have said before is that, before I could read, I used to pore through my parents' Barnaby collection, looking at the little man with wings who came through the window to take a boy much like myself on adventures. At that period of my life, we also had a copy of " A Hole Is To Dig ," and Sendak's illustrations had a similar effect. I didn't have to be able to read the book. It didn't matter. This Chagall-like ability to evoke, and induce, dreams puts Sendak's art on a level that I don't think you can reach by conscious effort. I'm sure Carlos Santana knows what note he