Maus

Throughout the weeks of reading comics, I’ve come across interesting topics. I've learned about the philosophy behind comics, the development of a comic strip and its characters along with many other fascinating lessons. However, when I stumbled upon the story of Maus I noticed an in-depth and almost darker take on comic book storytelling. Maus takes place during the Holocaust and tells a tale of the father of the books author. In the beginning, Artie Spiegelman the author of Maus ventures of to meet with his father whom he hadn’t seen for quite some time. Artie speaks with his father about sharing his story so that he could create the book Maus. His father mentions that he should just stick to his drawings instead of storytelling but then agrees which lead to the books creation.  The Holocaust is an intriguing topic by itself, however, instead of using humans Spiegelman used animals for his story. It was as if Spiegelman decided to take the metaphorical direction on this comic by using animals. The Jews were mice and the Germans were cats. Black and white were the only colors shown with thick to thin line quality.  Spiegelman went with a very minimalistic style, yet it was intriguing not only because of its uniqueness but because of the general history of the stories theme which was the Holocaust. Overall the story of Maus was enjoyable with lighthearted and deep emotional moments. If Spiegelman would have used humans instead of animals the story might have been seen as another Holocaust narrative. However, because the subject matter was changed, Maus was an eye-catcher and made for an obscure and fascinating read for this week.