Maus

For this week I read Maus by Art Spiegelman, which just immediately sucked me in. The story is surprisingly well paced, and it moves rather quickly. I like when a chapter ends the characters in the book are tired, and want to take a break. I really enjoyed the build of of events happening in the story. You are not immediately thrown into the concentration camps. In the book I remember the father not wanting the son to talk about his life before the concentration camp because it had nothing to do with the story.Which I disagree knowing more about a characters backstory, and who they were before these events happened makes you feel more for the characters. The father son relationship is very interesting because of how emotionally distant it is. The son wants his father to be there for him emotionally. I'm sure the father wants the same thing but because of what has happened to him it's almost impossible for him to express this to his son.

This book was made in 1991 I'm just very surprised it took so long for graphic novels to be finally viewed as serious pieces of literature. It definitely carves the way for graphic novels like Blankets, and Asterios Polyp to be taken seriously. I'm a little surprised how ineffective Will Eisner's graphic novels were. I think why this novel was able to be taken so serious was because of the subject matter of the novel. Anything dealing with the holocaust is going to be a very serious, and heavy topic in history. It will automatically not be grouped for just kids which is fantastic. Just like the anime we watched in class dealing with the bombings of Hiroshima. Both works bring awareness and understanding to the events. Both of these events  It is defiantly a stepping stone showing graphic novels can be taken seriously with the right subject matter. One of my favorite graphic novel writers, Luke Pearson does this in his books

Also I am a big fan of the style of this graphic novel. It looks like the artist made all the panels out of linoleum cut prints. Art spiegelman's style defiantly reminds me of some of the crude styles from underground comics which i really enjoy. The style gives it more of this serious tone that is a bit dark. I don't think Maus would be as effective if it had more of a Carl Barks style to it. Which would honestly be pretty creepy.

I have a few comics suggestions as well if anybody is interested Luke Pearson's Everything We Miss is an amazing read.