Legitimization of Comics: Maus

This week I read Maus by Art Speigelman, a graphic novel in which Speigelman interviews his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

One thing that struck me about Maus was how raw and unedited it felt. It feels like Speigelman didn't leave anything out in his interactions with his father--where many documentaries or other kinds of interviewing would portray a Holocaust survivor in the best way possible, Speigelman shows what feels like every minor quibble and annoyance between he and his father, like his father's habit of putting down Speigelman's mother. Speigelman does this within the Holocaust story as well-he doesn't cut out any of the minor events in favor of more important ones, he just tells it like it happened. I appreciate Speigelman's honesty with this style of storytelling in Maus, but I cannot tell whether I enjoyed it or not--it was honest, yes, but felt unnecessary at times.

One thing I definitely enjoyed about Maus was the characters being animals. I thought it was a very odd decision when I first heard of the comic, but on actually reading it the animal aspect really helped to both instantly show the frightening social dynamic of the time (the jews as mice and the Nazis as cats) and get me to be able to relate more to the characters. As Scott McCloud explained in Understanding Comics, we can insert ourselves better into more generalized and cartoon characters. Because Maus is such an intimate family story, I think I would have felt detached if the faces were all rendered realistically. However, with the cartoon mouse faces with almost no individual features, I felt that I could really visualize myself and my family being in that situation, and become more emotionally involved.

Comments

European Comics: Blacksad

Today I read the first book of Blacksad , an edgy French comic written by Juan Diaz Canales and illustrated by Juanjo Guarnido. The comics follow a panther detective through a series of anthropomorphic noir mysteries. I really enjoyed Blacksad . The story is a fairly standard mystery, but Blacksad's voice is engaging and authentic as a noir narrator, and the artwork is amazing. I felt that the art style was especially effective because it helps immediately establish character personalities--the criminals are rats and scaly creatures, the sheriff is a border collie, etc. I also tend to find that in noir movies or comics all the characters tend to look the same (all the men are square-jawed and serious, the women attractive and curvy) and the style of Blacksad helped prevent this from happening for me. Guarnido also does a fantastic job at using different shot angles and engaging acting within the panels. I enjoy this kind of visual storytelling much ...

Reconsidering the Superhero: Watchmen

This week I read the first issue of Watchmen by Alan Moore. I was surprised right off the bat by how dark and overtly political the comic was. Right in the opening scene, Rorschach talks bitterly about "the accumulated filth" of the city drowning in blood. For a comic from as big a publisher as D.C. to display such cynicism, I can definitely see how Watchmen expanded the genre in comics. One thing I really enjoyed about Watchmen that I don't see in other comics is how dark the humor is. As we see in the beginning of the comic, Rorschach often delivers monologues via a diary he keeps. This is often where Moore's sense of humor can be seen. In one scene, for example, Rorschach spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about how many kids his neighbor has and how she is probably abusing welfare–it's funny because of how small an issue it is that Rorschach is devoting his energies to. Rorschach also comes across as a bit comedic to me bec...

Comic Strips : Winsor McCay & Bill Watterson

This week's reading is a series of comic strips from Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. While I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes, I had only heard mention of McCay's work. So, I decided to read both comics to see how they would compare as two strips featuring the adventures of a young boy. Breaking into McCay's work was very surprising. I was expecting traditional pen-and-ink strips, but instead found a comic in which each panel is its own painstakingly designed, full-color illustration. McCays's style is strongly informed by classical illustrators. His work joins the curving designs of art nouveau with Maxfield Parrish's lush classical backdrops. While these illustrators' work was quite realistic, however, the world of Slumberland is abound with highly designed creatures. While cartoonists tend to caricature, McCay truly takes his designs one more step forward. One character from McCay's strip ...

Lauren's Literature of the Graphic Narrative

Search This Blog