In the latest edition of Comics to Read Before You Die, Jessie Robertson looks at The Complete Maus…
Written and Illustrated by Art Spiegelman.
When I started this project, I did a lot of research on some of the greatest graphic novels written; being a strictly Marvel/DC guy mostly, it was my goal to find out of the box stuff not written and published by them to share with the Flickering Myth audience, even if you were familiar with some of these works and I was not. Maus was one of those; actually the most premier. I finally picked it up at a Half Price Books near my house and saw it used to be a textbook from a college. I only knew it was a book using mice and cats to reenact the Holocaust. In essence, yes, but there’s so much more to it than that.
Art Spiegelman was a cartoonist working on his own magazine in 1978 when he dedicated himself to working on a long comic book story about the Holocaust, told from his father’s point of view. The characters in the book (which the Jewish characters are portrayed as mice) mirror their real life counterparts: Art, the main character, is a writer who is detailing his father’s life during the War for a graphic novel but also using it to hear more about his mother, who sadly committed suicide, which really happened. His father, Vladek, a loose translation of his real father’s name, is stubborn and resistant at first, but as time goes on, he gives in more and more and Art begins publishing his stories. Vladek is now remarried to a woman named Mala who experienced the same horrors as the Spiegelman’s did, being prisoners of the ruthless Nazi’s in concentration camps.
Spiegelman’s book looks as if it’s one long Saturday morning cartoon strip, drawn in the box style with the dialogue bubbles protruding every way they can. He fills these pages with dialogue, content everywhere and plays with the arrangement of a lot of panels as well. The art isn’t meant to dazzle you but there’s so much pain and history in some of those panels, I found myself staring at some of them for several minutes to really digest what it was showing. The story of young Vladek is a long and storied one; I won’t detail every plot point here but it shows you his early romance of Ana (his first wife) and how he ingratiated himself in her family, starting a business, starting a family and the first hints of trouble in Poland. When the war officially begins, it’s only turmoil for him and his loved ones as they are moved to Srodula, where things take a turn for the worst as the young couple is separated from their son. The stories are not told in a way to build suspense, strung together from the broken English of Vladek but there is never any easy moment for him and tension builds with every couple of panels about how will he (and his family) survive the next tribulation placed in front of them.
The drama playing out in Art’s world is just as interesting but in an everyday life sort of way. His father is getting older, needs more help and is more and more critical of Art and the way he handles things; not liking him paying for services when he can do them himself. About halfway through the story, Mala and Vladek reveal they have seen some of Art’s work, a particularly painful piece about his mother’s suicide and how badly it affected him. Vladek is extremely unhappy this story was printed for all the world to see when it was supposed to be a private matter. Art also battles insecurity against his own late brother, whom he never met and Vladek’s current wife Mala is always trying to cement her place against Vladek’s first wife Ana, whom he leaves constant reminders of everywhere.
The book moves on to Auschwitz, where Vladek and Ana are separated and have to sneak to get messages to each other, all while avoiding the death selection process. And Maus, at least the first part, has become a massive success; again art imitating life. Art then deals with the success and analyzation of his work and it becomes an introspective journey as well for him, as all his issues dealing with his father, his mother, her death, his mental breakdown, all come to the forefront. It’s a deep personal journey and puts an even more original spin on the graphic novel comic book.
Another aspect I mentioned earlier is that the Germans in the book are portrayed by cats, which in my mind, seeing cats and mice as the characters sort of numbs the magnitude of the violence and death and heartbreak down a bit so it’s all digestible enough but I could be way off base. Either way by the time you close the last page on Maus, you would have a taken a much original peek into the harrowing event that was the Holocaust through the eyes of a captivating and profound narrator. Spiegelman went on to receive a Pulitzer Prize for his completed works when it was finally finished in 1991, after over a decade of publishing chapters in his own monthly periodical.
As a comic book fan, this may not be your cup of tea, but comics are another form of the novel, where story, and plot and characters are the main focus; this book has them all in spades, while re-examining one of history’s greatest tragedies but in a different light than you’re used to. I”m glad I found Maus and I think everyone else will be too.
Jessie Robertson
