Maus Graphic Novel Review

Maus

Graphic Novel Review

There is a great trio of graphic novels that are seen by most comic book geeks – like me – as having revolutionised the genre, giving an art form dominated by stories about good-natured men in tights a more gritty, realistic texture. All were released around the mid-eighties in what still remains the most fertile period yet for this most overlooked medium.

The first of these books is Alan Moore’s much publicised – and recently filmed – 12-issue series, called Watchmen. Concerning a group of “masks” (the terminology for superhero in the alternate reality of the books), this was Moore’s self-stated attempt “to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-Hiroshima world.”

Second is Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, in which an aging Batman is called out of retirement for one last hoorah. Miller said he was hired to “give Batman his balls back”, which is just what he did, and a new age of comics began.

The third, and perhaps most groundbreaking of the trio, was Art Spiegelman’s Maus, a tale of survival during the Holocaust, featuring anthropomorphic animals in place of humans. Whereas both Miller and Moore’s books were a new take on what was a tired superhero formula, Spiegelman’s book eschews the cape and cowl to focus on his father’s experiences as a Jew during World War II, recreating in harrowing detail the Nazi rise to power and their persecution of undesirables.

Spiegelman writes in semi-autobiographical style, using meetings with his father as a framing device for the main plot. As Spiegelman extracts his dad’s life story, flashbacks occur, and both narratives progress hand in hand. What unfolds is purely spectacular; parts of this book will make you grip the pages so tight in fear and anger that you will be in danger of rending the book in two before you finish it.

Vladek (portrayed as a mouse throughout) is a Polish Jew called into the army before his country’s annexation by the Nazis. He is captured and lives with his family in gradually worsening conditions until he eventually ends up in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, managing to live through the end of the war.

What really enraptures here is the rawness of the story; no punches are pulled in telling the tale of a society gone mad. The reader suffers alongside Vladek, an ordinary, yet resourceful and resilient young Pole, as he tries to keep his young family together. The flash forwards mainly deal with Art’s relationship with his father, who has become stingy and racist in his old age, and give the overall impression that even surviving through the Holocaust was no great gift.

A perfect example of a “legitimate” comic book.

9.5/10