Maus-ing on The Impact of Maus

I’m not gonna lie, when I think of comics the first that comes to mind is grown men going around fighting criminals in tights and outlandish garbs. Maybe my mind would then go to cats that love lasagna, or boys that wiff footballs, or those really political comics I never understand. But it certainly never jumps to a story about a writer interviewing his father on his time in the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust.
Maybe it’s because of the first two examples above, but I don’t think people grasped the idea that comics could cover mature themes till Maus. I know I’m making it sound like these people are idiotic fools and of course comics can be for adults. How can people be so stupid and not realize that. Yadda yadda yadda. But of I course I think that, Maus had already pushed the comic medium forward by the time I was around, so I’m gonna assume like the close minded person I am that every generation had the same amount of knowledge I had. It’s easy to perceive things as being obvious once they already exist.
Everyone (hopefully) agrees that slavery is bad, but it hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when people thought they weren’t doing anything wrong by enslaving an entire race of people. When put that way it makes 1700’s Americans sound foolish. And no, I am not saying people that didn’t know comics could cover heavy topics are as stupid as people that thought slavery was good. What I am saying is that it’s hard to know what is or isn’t right when there isn’t a standard set in place. That’s why they’re the standard, they sparked a realization in a large enough amount of people that it changed the way things are perceived.

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It’s easy to see why a story like Maus became as influential as it was. While depicting a very adult and mature subject matter it’s something even children could follow. I remember friends of mine reading Maus back in the sixth grade. While it constantly depicts horrific imagery, nothing gory is ever shown. Characters swear, but it’s never anything major. And I think what adds to it’s appeal is the story’s subject matter. There is something so mystifying about the holocaust, the fact that humanity could allow such heinous treatment of other human beings to happen and then let that go on for years. It’s hard to believe it even really happened, but it did. Like a terrible scene you want to look away but can’t peel your eyes off of. Any retelling of a survivors experience in the holocaust is fascinating, because they all went through so much to be able to tell their stories. It’s not something that can be easily overlooked. So from a narrative standpoint Maus was always going to be an intriguing and book to read.
Art Spiegalman also doesn’t slack on the artwork when telling his story either, taking full advantage of the medium to add layers and depth to the story being presented. There’s an entire metaphor going on throughout the books where the holocaust victims are depicted as mice, while the Nazis are depicted as cats, showing the dominating presence the Nazi party had in that time in a way that could never be translated into a written format. It holds the narrative weight of a novel but also uses images to help deepen the impact of the story. When the audience sees an illustration of mice screaming in agony as they’re burned alive, it carries a weight with it that words could never hold a candle to. It’s for that, Maus was able to open people’s eyes to the potential of the medium, to show that graphic novels weren’t a popcorn “turn your brain off and look at the pretty pictures” form of entertainment. They could tell stories as legitimate as books or movies, and through using the strengths of the medium conveys a story only comics could tell.