87-439: Mad Cave Studios (also known simply as Mad Cave ) is an independent comic book publisher based out of Miami, Florida ; it was established in 2014. Mad Cave has published a range of comic books and trade paperbacks which were originally distributed by Diamond Comic Distributors . The publisher was founded in 2014 by Mark London. In February 2018, Mad Cave published the first issue of its flagship title, Battlecats . It released
174-537: A "deep personal connection" with the memory, though separated from it by "generational distance". In the field of psychology, this is called transgenerational trauma or generational trauma . Art tried to keep his father's story chronological, because otherwise he would "never keep it straight". His mother Anja's memories are conspicuously absent from the narrative, given her suicide and Vladek's destruction of her diaries. Hirsch sees Maus in part as an attempt to reconstruct her memory. Vladek keeps her memory alive with
261-413: A "very long comic book". He began another series of interviews with his father in 1978, and visited Auschwitz in 1979. He serialized the story in a comics and graphics magazine he and his wife Mouly began in 1980 called Raw . American comic books were big business with a diversity of genres in the 1940s and 1950s, but had reached a low ebb by the late 1970s. By the time Maus began serialization,
348-652: A cartoon-based storytelling vocabulary, rather than an illustration-based one. Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (1972) inspired Spiegelman to include autobiographical elements in his comics. Spiegelman stated, "without Binky Brown , there would be no Maus ". Among the graphic artists who influenced Maus , Spiegelman cited Frans Masereel , who had made early wordless novels in woodcuts such as Passionate Journey (1919). Spiegelman's work as cartoonist and editor had long been known and respected in
435-515: A difference between the self-image of the Israeli Jew as a fearless defender of the homeland, and that of the American Jew as a feeble victim, something that one Israeli writer disparaged as "the diaspora sickness". Spiegelman, like many of his critics, has expressed concern that "[r]eality is too much for comics ... so much has to be left out or distorted", admitting that his presentation of
522-508: A group Vladek hides with in another bunker. When the Germans depart, the group splits up and leaves the ghetto. In Sosnowiec, Vladek and Anja move from one hiding place to the next, making occasional contact with other Jews in hiding. Vladek disguises himself as an ethnic Pole and hunts for provisions. The couple arrange with smugglers to escape to Hungary, but it is a trick—the Gestapo arrest them on
609-632: A journalist for Gazeta Wyborcza , set up his own publishing house to publish Maus in Polish in 2001. Demonstrators protested Maus ' s publication and burned the book in front of Gazeta ' s offices. Bikont's response was to don a pig mask and wave to the protesters from the office windows. The magazine-sized Japanese translation was the only authorized edition with larger pages. Long-standing plans for an Arabic translation have yet to come to fruition. A Russian law passed in December 2014 prohibiting
696-426: A lightness and humanity to the story which "helps carry the weight of the unbearable historical realities". Spiegelman started taking down his interviews with Vladek on paper, but quickly switched to a tape recorder, face-to-face or over the phone. Spiegelman often condensed Vladek's words, and occasionally added to the dialogue or synthesized multiple retellings into a single portrayal. Spiegelman worried about
783-478: A man wearing a mouse mask. In Maus , the characters seem to be mice and cats only in their predator/prey relationship. In every respect other than their heads and tails, they act and speak as ordinary humans. Further complicating the animal metaphor, Anja is ironically shown to be afraid of mice, while other characters appear with pet dogs and cats, and the Nazis with attack dogs. To Marianne Hirsch , Spiegelman's life
870-538: A manufacturer. Vladek begs Art not to include this in the book and Art reluctantly agrees. Anja suffers a breakdown due to postpartum depression after giving birth to their first son Richieu, and the couple go to a sanitarium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for her to recover. After they return, political and anti-Semitic tensions build until Vladek is drafted just before the Nazi invasion of Poland . Vladek
957-590: A medium. Maus came to prominence when the term " graphic novel " was beginning to gain currency. Will Eisner popularized the term with the publication in 1978 of A Contract with God . The term was used partly to rise above the low cultural status that comics had in the English-speaking world, and partly because the term "comic book" was being used to refer to short-form periodicals, leaving no accepted vocabulary with which to talk about book-form comics. The first chapter of Maus appeared in December 1980 in
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#17329052590841044-507: A mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first and only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize . In the frame-tale timeline in the narrative present that begins in 1978 in New York City, Spiegelman talks with his father Vladek about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material and information for the Maus project he is preparing. In the narrative past, Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from
1131-606: A month in Binghamton State Mental Hospital in 1968 after a nervous breakdown . Shortly after he got out, his mother died by suicide. Spiegelman's father was not happy with his son's involvement in the hippie subculture. Spiegelman said that when he bought himself a German Volkswagen it damaged their already-strained relationship "beyond repair". Around this time, Spiegelman read in fanzines about such graphic artists as Frans Masereel who had made wordless novels . The discussions in those fanzines about making
1218-458: A new comic book company based out of Idaho and headed by Joe Quesada . The company is a joint venture with Belgian publisher Dupuis . In 2018, Mad Cave ran a "Talent Search" for new comic book writers and artists. Finalists worked on comic books for Mad Cave. The comic book Show's End was the first title to feature work from the 2018 Talent Search winners, launching in August 2019. The Talent Search
1305-548: A pared-down style, one little removed from his pencil sketches, which he found more direct and immediate. Characters are rendered in a minimalist way: animal heads with dots for eyes and slashes for eyebrows and mouths, sitting on humanoid bodies. Spiegelman wanted to get away from the rendering of the characters in the original "Maus", in which oversized cats towered over the Jewish mice, an approach which Spiegelman says, "tells you how to feel, tells you how to think". He preferred to let
1392-485: A pile of corpses—the corpses of the six million Jews upon whom Maus ' success was built. He is told by his psychiatrist that his father feels guilt for having survived and for outliving his first son, and that some of Art's guilt may spring from painting his father in such an unflattering way. As he had not lived in the camps himself, he finds it difficult to understand or visualize this "separate universe", and feels inadequate in portraying it. Spiegelman parodies
1479-429: A quote from Samuel Beckett : "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness", but then realizes, "on the other hand, he said it". Vladek tells of his hardship in the camps, of starvation and abuse, of his resourcefulness, of avoiding the selektionen —the process by which prisoners were selected for further labor or execution. Despite the danger, Anja and Vladek exchange occasional messages. As
1566-512: A race, but they are not human". The opening of second volume emphasizes the dehumanization of the "mouse" metaphor, with a quote from a Nazi propaganda paper decrying Mickey Mouse , "the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom", as evidence of the "Jewish brutalization of the people". Penguin Books obtained the rights to publish the initial volume in the Commonwealth in 1986. In support of
1653-448: A room with no food for a week, then you could see what it is, friends!" As an adult, Art visits his father, from whom he has become estranged. Vladek has remarried a woman named Mala since the suicide of Art's mother Anja in 1968. Art asks Vladek to recount his Holocaust experiences. Vladek tells of his time in the Polish city of Częstochowa and how he came to marry into Anja's wealthy family in 1937 and move to Sosnowiec to become
1740-563: A second series, Midnight Task Force that July. In November 2018, Mad Cave Studios released the first issue of Knights of the Golden Sun. Their fourth title Honor and Curse launched in February 2019. Digital versions of their comics are available at ComiXology . and Drive Thru Comics. In September, they announced a young adult graphic novel imprint called Maverick to debut in the fall of 2021. In July 2024, Mad Cave announced Amazing Comics,
1827-431: A series by Mirage Studios , was very influential on a new generation of creators and became a huge success story of self publishing. Jeff Smith , a friend of Dave Sim, was also very influential in self-published comics, creating the highly popular and long-lived Bone . As with Sim with Cerebus and unlike mainstream comic books stories with their spontaneously generated and rambling narratives, Smith produced Bone as
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#17329052590841914-678: A series of Polish pamphlets published after the war which detailed what happened to the Jews by region. In 1973, Spiegelman produced a strip for Short Order Comix #1 about his mother's suicide called "Prisoner on the Hell Planet". The same year, he edited a pornographic , psychedelic book of quotations, and dedicated it to his mother. He spent the rest of the 1970s building his reputation making short avant-garde comics. He moved back to New York from San Francisco in 1975, which he admitted to his father only in 1977, by which time he had decided to work on
2001-544: A story with a planned end. The publishing house Fantagraphics published the work of a new generation of artists, notably Love and Rockets by the brothers Jaime , Gilbert and Mario Hernandez . Dan DeBono published Indy – The Independent Comic Guide , a magazine covering only independent comics starting in 1994. It ran for 18 issues and featured covers by Daniel Clowes , Tim Vigil , Drew Hayes , William Tucci , Jeff Smith and Wendy and Richard Pini. Alternative comics have increasingly established themselves within
2088-483: A three-page strip for the first issue of Funny Aminals , which Green edited. Spiegelman wanted to do a strip about racism, and at first considered focusing on African Americans, with cats as Ku Klux Klan members chasing African-American mice. Instead, he turned to the Holocaust and depicted Nazi cats persecuting Jewish mice in a strip he titled "Maus". The tale was narrated to a mouse named " Mickey ". After finishing
2175-518: Is cognate to the English word "mouse", and also reminiscent of the German verb mauscheln , which means "to speak like a Jew" and refers to the way Jews from Eastern Europe spoke German —a word etymologically related not to Maus but, distantly, to Moses . Spiegelman's perceived audacity in using the Holocaust as his subject was compounded by his telling the story in comics. The prevailing view in
2262-504: Is "dominated by memories that are not his own". His work is one not of memory but of postmemory , a term she coined after encountering Maus . This describes the relation of the children of survivors with the survivors themselves. While these children have not had their parents' experiences, they grow up with their parents' memories—the memory of another's memory—until the stories become so powerful that for these children they become memories in their own right. The children's proximity creates
2349-537: Is captured at the front and forced to work as a prisoner of war . After his release, he finds Germany has annexed Sosnowiec , and he is dropped off on the other side of the border in the German protectorate . He sneaks across the border and reunites with his family. During one of Art's visits, he finds that a friend of Mala's has sent the couple one of the underground comix magazines Art contributed to. Mala had tried to hide it, but Vladek finds and reads it. In "Prisoner on
2436-489: Is enraged and calls Vladek a "murderer". The story jumps to 1986, after the first six chapters of Maus have appeared in a collected edition. Art is overcome with the unexpected attention the book receives and finds himself "totally blocked". Art talks about the book with his psychiatrist Paul Pavel, a Czech Holocaust survivor. Pavel suggests that, as those who perished in the camps can never tell their stories, "maybe it's better not to have any more stories". Art replies with
2523-452: Is ever present. In making people of each ethnicity look alike, Spiegelman hoped to show the absurdity of dividing people along such lines. Spiegelman has stated that "these metaphors ... are meant to self-destruct" and "reveal the inanity of the notion itself". Animals signified the characters' roles in the story rather than their races—the gentile Françoise is a mouse because of her identification with her husband, who identifies with
2610-429: Is little gray in the shading. In the narrative present, the pages are arranged in eight-panel grids; in the narrative past, Spiegelman found himself "violating the grid constantly" with his page layouts. Spiegelman rendered the original three-page "Maus" and "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" in highly detailed, expressive styles. Spiegelman planned to draw Maus in such a manner, but after initial sketches he decided to use
2697-470: Is more in line with the popular genres of other media: thrillers , romances, realistic drama and so on. Oni Press avoids publishing superhero, fantasy and science fiction titles, unless interesting creators approach these concepts from an unusual angle. Top Shelf Productions has published many notable alternative comics such as Craig Thompson's Blankets and Alex Robinson 's Box Office Poison . In 2010 they branched out into unusual Japanese manga, with
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2784-716: Is of Vladek and Anja's tombstone —Vladek died in 1982, before the book was completed. Art Spiegelman was born on February 15, 1948, in Sweden to Polish Jews and Holocaust survivors Vladek and Anja Spiegelman. An aunt poisoned his parents' first son Richieu to avoid capture by the Nazis, four years before Spiegelman's birth. He and his parents emigrated to the United States in 1951. During his youth his mother occasionally talked about Auschwitz, but his father did not want him to know about it. Spiegelman developed an interest in comics early and began drawing professionally at 16. He spent
2871-559: The African National Congress 's cultural boycott in opposition to apartheid , Spiegelman refused to "compromise with fascism" by allowing publication of his work in South Africa. By 2011, Maus had been translated into about 30 languages. Three translations were particularly important to Spiegelman: French, as his wife was French, and because of his respect for the sophisticated Franco-Belgian comics tradition; German, given
2958-483: The Great American Novel in comics inspired him. Spiegelman became a key figure in the underground comix movement of the 1970s, both as cartoonist and editor. In 1972, Justin Green produced the semi-autobiographical comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary , which inspired other underground cartoonists to produce more personal and revealing work. The same year, Green asked Spiegelman to contribute
3045-549: The Voyager Company released The Complete Maus on CD-ROM , a collection which contained the original comics, Vladek's taped transcripts, filmed interviews, sketches, and other background material. The CD-ROM was based on HyperCard , a Macintosh and Apple IIGS application that has since become obsolete. In 2011 Pantheon Books published a companion to The Complete Maus entitled MetaMaus , with further background material, including filmed footage of Vladek. The centerpiece of
3132-747: The underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which in the past have dominated the American comic book industry. They span across a wide range of genres , artistic styles, and subjects. Alternative comics are often published in small numbers with less regard for regular distribution schedules. Many alternative comics have variously been labelled as post-underground comics , independent comics , indie comics , auteur comics , small press comics , new wave comics , creator-owned comics , art comics , or literary comics . Many self-published " minicomics " also fall under
3219-421: The "Big Two" comics publishers, Marvel and DC Comics , dominated the industry with mostly superhero titles. The underground comix movement that had flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s also seemed moribund. The public perception of comic books was as adolescent power fantasies, inherently incapable of mature artistic or literary expression. Most discussion focused on comics as a genre rather than as
3306-596: The "alternative" umbrella. By the mid-1970s, artists within the underground comix scene felt that it had become less creative than it had been in the past. According to Art Spiegelman , "What had seemed like a revolution simply deflated into a lifestyle. Underground comics were stereotyped as dealing only with sex, dope and cheap thrills. They got stuffed back into the closet, along with bong pipes and love beads , as things started to get uglier." In an attempt to address this, underground cartoonists moved to start magazines that anthologized new, artistically ambitious comics in
3393-402: The 1980s. RAW , a lavishly produced, large format anthology that was clearly intended to be seen as a work of art was founded by Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly in 1980. Another magazine, Weirdo , was started by the leading figure in underground comix, Robert Crumb , in 1981. These magazines reflected changes from the days of the underground comix. They had different formats from
3480-554: The English-speaking world held comics as inherently trivial, thus degrading Spiegelman's subject matter, especially as he used animal heads in place of recognizably human ones. Talking animals have been a staple of comics, and while they have a traditional reputation as children's fare, the underground had long made use of them in adult stories, for example in Robert Crumb 's Fritz the Cat , which comics critic Joseph Witek asserts shows that
3567-647: The Hell Planet", Art is traumatized by his mother's suicide three months after his release from the mental hospital , and in the end depicts himself behind bars saying, "You murdered me, Mommy, and left me here to take the rap!" Though it brings back painful memories, Vladek admits that dealing with the issue in such a way was for the best. In 1943, the Nazis move the Jews of the Sosnowiec Ghetto to Srodula and march them back to Sosnowiec to work. The family splits up—Vladek and Anja send Richieu to Zawiercie to stay with an aunt for safety. As more Jews are sent from
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3654-450: The Holocaust victims. When asked what animal he would make Israeli Jews , Spiegelman suggests porcupines . When Art visits his psychiatrist , the two wear mouse masks. Spiegelman's perceptions of the animal metaphor seem to have evolved over the book's making—in the original publication of the first volume, his self-portrait showed a mouse head on a human body, but by the time the second volume arrived, his self-portrait had become that of
3741-444: The Holocaust, first to American soldiers, then to his son, is in English, which became his daily language when he moved to America . Vladek's English is fluent, but his phrasing is often non-native, showing the influence of Yiddish (and possibly also of Polish). For example, he asks Art, "But, tell me, how is it by you? How is going the comics business?" Later, describing his internment, he tells Art, "[E]very day we prayed ... I
3828-403: The Nazis' vision of racial divisions; Vladek's racism is also put on display when he becomes upset that Françoise would pick up a black hitchhiker, a " schwartser " as he says. When she berates him, a victim of antisemitism, for his attitude, he replies, "It's not even to compare, the schwartsers and the Jews!" Spiegelman gradually deconstructs the animal metaphor throughout the book, especially in
3915-583: The Wanderer , and James O'Barr 's The Crow . Oni Press used the term "real mainstream," coined by Stephen L. Holland of the UK comic shop Page 45, to describe its output. Traditional American comic books regard superhero titles as "mainstream" and all other genres as "non-mainstream", a reversal of the perception in other countries. Oni Press, therefore, adopted the "real mainstream" term to suggest that it publishes comic books and graphic novels whose subject matter
4002-523: The art. Spiegelman has published articles promoting a greater knowledge of his medium's history. Chief among his early influences were Harvey Kurtzman , Will Eisner , and Bernard Krigstein 's " Master Race ". Though he acknowledged Eisner's early work as an influence, he denied that Eisner's first graphic novel, A Contract with God (1978), had any impact on Maus . He cited Harold Gray 's comic strip Little Orphan Annie as having "influenced Maus fairly directly", and praised Gray's work for using
4089-508: The basis for the book, which Spiegelman began in 1978. He serialized Maus from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in Raw , an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly , who also appears in Maus . A collected volume of the first six chapters that appeared in 1986, Maus I: My Father Bleeds History , brought the book mainstream attention; a second volume, Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began , collected
4176-434: The book is a Spiegelman interview conducted by Hillary Chute . It also has interviews with Spiegelman's wife and children, sketches, photographs, family trees, assorted artwork, and a DVD with video, audio, photos, and an interactive version of Maus . Spiegelman dedicated Maus to his brother Richieu and his first daughter Nadja . The epigraph of the first volume is a quote from Adolf Hitler : "The Jews are undoubtedly
4263-453: The book's background; and Polish . Poland was the setting for most of the book, and Polish was the language of his parents and his own mother tongue . The publishers of the German edition had to convince the German culture ministry of the work's serious intent to have the swastika appear on the cover, per laws prohibiting the display of Nazi symbolism . Reception in Germany was positive— Maus
4350-494: The camps are Poles, and Anja and Vladek are tricked by Polish smugglers into the hands of the Nazis. Anja and Vladek hear stories that Poles continue to drive off and even kill returning Jews after the war . Vladek spoke Yiddish and Polish. He also learned English, German, and French while still in Poland. His knowledge of languages helps him several times during the story, both before and during his imprisonment. Vladek's recounting of
4437-548: The character with a fedora in place of his original police hat, but appended a note to the volume voicing his objection to this "intrusion". This version of the first volume appeared in 1990 from the publishing house Zmora Bitan . It had an indifferent or negative reception, and the publisher did not release the second volume. Another Israeli publisher put out both volumes, with a new translation by poet Yehuda Vizan that included Vladek's broken language, which Zmora Bitan had refused to do. Marilyn Reizbaum saw this as highlighting
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#17329052590844524-422: The comics community, but the media attention after the first volume's publication in 1986 was unexpected. Hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews appeared, and Maus became the center of new attention focused on comics. It was considered one of the "Big Three" book-form comics from around 1986–87, along with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns , that are said to have brought the term "graphic novel" and
4611-558: The content of the books. Spiegelman later came to accept the term, and with Drawn & Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros successfully lobbied the Book Industry Study Group in the early 2000s to include "graphic novel" as a category in bookstores. Pantheon collected the last five chapters in 1991 in a second volume subtitled And Here My Troubles Began . Pantheon later collected the two volumes into soft- and hardcover two-volume boxed sets and single-volume editions. In 1994
4698-631: The display of Nazi propaganda led to the removal of Maus from Russian bookstores leading up to Victory Day due to the swastika appearing on the book's cover. Now the book is widely available again, with a slightly modified cover. A few panels were changed for the Hebrew edition of Maus . Based on Vladek's memory, Spiegelman portrayed one of the minor characters as a member of the Nazi-installed Jewish Police . An Israeli descendant objected and threatened to sue for libel . Spiegelman redrew
4785-615: The effect that his organizing of Vladek's story would have on its authenticity. In the end, he eschewed a Joycean approach and settled on a linear narrative he thought would be better at "getting things across". He strove to present how the book was recorded and organized as an integral part of the book itself, expressing the "sense of an interview shaped by a relationship". The story is text-driven, with few wordless panels among its 1,500 black-and-white panels. The art has high contrast, with heavy black areas and thick black borders balanced against areas of white and wide white margins. There
4872-436: The genocidal stereotypes that drove the Nazis to their Final Solution may risk reinforcing racist labels, but Spiegelman uses the idea to create anonymity for the characters. According to art historian Andrea Liss, this may paradoxically enable the reader to identify with the characters as human, preventing the reader from observing racial characteristics based on facial traits, while reminding readers that racist classification
4959-494: The genre could "open up the way to a paradoxical narrative realism" that Maus exploited. Ostensibly about the Holocaust, the story entwines with the frame tale of Art interviewing and interacting with his father. Art's "Prisoner on the Hell Planet" is also encompassed by the frame, and stands in visual and thematic contrast with the rest of the book as the characters are in human form in a surreal , German Expressionist woodcut style inspired by Lynd Ward . Spiegelman blurs
5046-463: The ghettos to Auschwitz, the aunt poisons herself, her children and Richieu to death to escape the Gestapo and not die in the gas chamber. In Srodula, many Jews build bunkers to hide from the Germans. Vladek's bunker is discovered and he is placed into a "ghetto inside the ghetto" surrounded by barbed wire . The remnants of Vladek and Anja's family are taken away. Srodula is cleared of its Jews, except for
5133-446: The heads and tails of different species of animals; Jews are drawn as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs, among others. Spiegelman took advantage of the way Nazi propaganda films depicted Jews as vermin, though he was first struck by the metaphor after attending a presentation where Ken Jacobs showed films of minstrel shows along with early American animated films, abundant with racial caricatures. Spiegelman derived
5220-414: The idea of comics for adults into mainstream consciousness. It was credited with changing the public's perception of what comics could be at a time when, in the English-speaking world, they were considered to be for children, and strongly associated with superheroes. Initially, critics of Maus showed a reluctance to include comics in literary discourse. The New York Times intended praise when saying of
5307-634: The industry. He often used the back of his comic to deliver "messages from the President", which were sometimes editorials concerning the comics industry and self-publishing . Wendy and Richard Pini founded WaRP Graphics , one of the early American independent comics publishers, in 1977 and released the first issues of their long-running series, Elfquest , in February 1978. They followed with titles such as MythAdventures and related titles by Robert Asprin ; and Thunder Bunny , created by Martin Greim . WaRP
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#17329052590845394-603: The larger culture, as evidenced by the success of the feature film Ghost World based on one of the best selling alternative titles, Eightball , by Daniel Clowes and the cross-genre success of the book Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth , by Chris Ware , a story that was serialized in Ware's comic, Acme Novelty Library . Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics publish many alternative comics. Notable examples include Stan Sakai 's Usagi Yojimbo , Sergio Aragonés 's Groo
5481-517: The line between the frame and the world, such as when neurotically trying to deal with what Maus is becoming for him, he says to his wife: "In real life you'd never have let me talk this long without interrupting". When a prisoner whom the Nazis believe to be a Jew claims to be German, Spiegelman has difficulty deciding whether to present this character as a cat or a mouse. Throughout the book, Spiegelman incorporates and highlights banal details from his father's tales, sometimes humorous or ironic, giving
5568-455: The mid-1980s, Elfquest was selling 100,000 copies per issue in the initial print run, attracting one of the largest followings of any direct-sale comic. Most issues up to No. 9 saw multiple printings. It was the visible success of Elfquest that inspired many other writers and artists to try their own hand at self-publishing. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird 's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ,
5655-503: The mouse as symbol for the Jew from Nazi propaganda, emphasized in a quote from a German newspaper in the 1930s that prefaces the second volume: "Mickey Mouse is the most miserable idea ever revealed ... Healthy emotions tell every independent young man and every honorable youth that the dirty and filth-covered vermin, the greatest bacteria carrier in the animal kingdom, cannot be the ideal type of animal ... Away with Jewish brutalization of
5742-485: The narrative past, which begins in the mid-1930s, and continues until the end of the Holocaust in 1945. In Rego Park in 1958, a young Art Spiegelman is skating with his friends when he falls down and hurts himself, but his friends keep going. When he returns home, he finds his father Vladek, who asks him why he is upset, and Art proceeds to tell him that his friends left him behind. His father responds in broken English, "Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in
5829-450: The old comix, and the selection of artists differed, too. RAW featured many European artists, Weirdo included photo-funnies and strange outsider art -type documents. Elfquest was based on a science fiction/fantasy theme with powerful female and male characters of varied races and cultures, and done in a bright and colourful manga -like style. The underground staples of sex, drugs and revolution were much less in evidence. More emphasis
5916-529: The origins of self-publishing in the comics industry, many consider Dave Sim an early leader in this area. Starting in 1977, he primarily wrote, drew and published Cerebus the Aardvark , on his own under the "Aardvark-Vanaheim Inc." imprint and announcing he would publish 300 issues of the series consecutively, something unheard of at the time for a self-published book. Sim is known for his activism in favor of creators' rights and his outspoken nature in regards to
6003-461: The people! Down with Mickey Mouse! Wear the Swastika Cross!" Jewish characters try to pass themselves off as ethnic Poles by tying pig masks to their faces, with the strings showing at the back. Vladek's disguise was more convincing than Anja's—"you could see she was more Jewish", Vladek says. Spiegelman shows this Jewishness by having her tail hang out of her disguise. This literalization of
6090-427: The pictures on his desk, "like a shrine", according to Mala. Spiegelman displays his sense of guilt in many ways. He suffers anguish over his dead brother, Richieu, who perished in the Holocaust, and whom he feels he can never live up to. The eighth chapter, made after the publication and unexpected success of the first volume, opens with a guilt-ridden Spiegelman (now in human form, with a strapped-on mouse mask) atop
6177-451: The reader make independent moral judgments. He drew the cat-Nazis the same size as the mouse-Jews, and dropped the stereotypical villainous expressions. Spiegelman wanted the artwork to have a diary feel to it, and so drew the pages on stationery with a fountain pen and typewriter correction fluid . It was reproduced at the same size it was drawn, unlike his other work, which was usually drawn larger and shrunk down, which hides defects in
6264-634: The release of AX:alternative manga (edited by Sean Michael Wilson). This 400-page collection received a high level of critical praise. Maus Maus , often published as Maus: A Survivor's Tale , is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman , serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodern techniques, and represents Jews as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs respectively. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or
6351-462: The remaining chapters in 1991. Maus was one of the first books in graphic novel format to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world. Most of the book weaves in and out of two timelines. In the frame tale of the narrative present, Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens in New York City in 1978–79. The story Vladek tells unfolds in
6438-513: The second issue of Raw as a small insert; a new chapter appeared in each issue until the magazine came to an end in 1991. Every chapter but the last appeared in Raw . Spiegelman struggled to find a publisher for a book edition of Maus , but after a rave New York Times review of the serial in August 1986, Pantheon Books published the first six chapters in a volume called Maus: A Survivor's Tale and subtitled My Father Bleeds History . Spiegelman
6525-651: The second volume, showing where the lines cannot be drawn between races of humans. The Germans are depicted with little difference between them, but there is great variety among the Poles and Jews who dominate the story. Sometimes Jews and the Judenrat councils are shown complying with the occupiers; some trick other Jews into capture, while others act as ghetto police for the Nazis. Spiegelman shows numerous instances of Poles who risked themselves to aid Jews, and also shows antisemitism as being rife among them. The kapos who run
6612-445: The story may not be accurate. He takes a postmodern approach; Maus "feeds on itself", telling the story of how the story was made. It examines the choices Spiegelman made in the retelling of his father's memories, and the artistic choices he had to make. For example, when his French wife converts to Judaism , Spiegelman's character frets over whether to depict her as a frog, a mouse, or another animal. The book portrays humans with
6699-566: The strip, Spiegelman visited his father to show him the finished work, which he had based in part on an anecdote he had heard about his father's Auschwitz experience. His father gave him further background information, which piqued Spiegelman's interest. Spiegelman recorded a series of interviews over four days with his father, which was to provide the basis of the longer Maus . Spiegelman followed up with extensive research, reading survivors' accounts and talking to friends and family who had also survived. He got detailed information about Sosnowiec from
6786-424: The train (as Hungary is invaded) and take them to Auschwitz , where they are separated until after the war. Art asks after Anja's diaries, which Vladek tells him were her account of her Holocaust experiences and the only record of what happened to her after her separation from Vladek at Auschwitz and which Vladek says she had wanted Art to read. Vladek comes to admit that he burned them after she killed herself. Art
6873-536: The war progresses and the German front is pushed back, the prisoners are marched from Auschwitz in occupied Poland to Gross-Rosen within the Reich and then to Dachau , where the hardships only increase and Vladek catches typhus . The war ends, the camp survivors are freed and Vladek and Anja reunite. The book closes with Vladek turning over in his bed as he finishes his story and telling Art, "I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it's enough stories for now". The final image
6960-638: The years leading up to World War II to his parents' liberation from the Nazi concentration camps . Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father and the absence of his mother, who died by suicide when Spiegelman was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of Auschwitz . The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts. A three-page strip also called "Maus" that he made in 1972 gave Spiegelman an opportunity to interview his father about his life during World War II. The recorded interviews became
7047-423: Was a best-seller and was taught in schools. The Polish translation encountered difficulties; as early as 1987, when Spiegelman planned a research visit to Poland, the Polish consulate official who approved his visa questioned him about the Poles' depiction as pigs, and pointed out how serious an insult it was. Publishers and commentators refused to deal with the book for fear of protests and boycotts. Piotr Bikont ,
7134-414: Was also the original publisher of A Distant Soil by Colleen Doran . As an alternative to most of the masculine-themed comics of its time – and even to this day – Elfquest became enormously popular among female comic book fans around the world, while also drawing a solid male fan base. WaRP Graphics paved the way for many independent and alternative comic book creators who came after them. At its peak in
7221-434: Was difficult for critics and reviewers to classify, and also for booksellers, who needed to know on which shelves to place it. Though Pantheon pushed for the term "graphic novel", Spiegelman was not comfortable with this, as many book-length comics were being referred to as "graphic novels" whether or not they had novelistic qualities. He suspected the term's use was an attempt to validate the comics form, rather than to describe
7308-457: Was placed on developing the craft of comics drawing and storytelling, with many artists aiming for work that was both subtler and more complex than was typical in the underground. This was true of much of the new work done by the established comix artists as well as the newcomers: Art Spiegelman's Maus , much celebrated for bringing a new seriousness to comics, was serialized in RAW. While fans debate
7395-517: Was relieved that the book's publication preceded the theatrical release of the animated film An American Tail by three months, as he believed that the film, produced by Steven Spielberg 's Amblin Entertainment , was inspired by Maus and wished to avoid comparisons with it. The book found a large audience, partly because of its distribution through bookstores rather than the direct market comic shops where comic books were normally sold. Maus
7482-403: Was run again in 2019 for both writers and artists. The third Talent Search from June 1 to September 1, 2020. Six winners had their work published in an anthology comic book. The "Underworld" is an ongoing shared universe created by London. Alternative comics Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following
7569-477: Was very religious, and it wasn't else to do". The passages where he is shown in Europe speaking Yiddish or Polish are in standard English, without the idiosyncratic phrasings Spiegelman records from their English-language conversations. Spiegelman does not show other Holocaust survivors (Vladek's second wife Mala, their friends, and Art's therapist Paul Pavel) using Yiddish-influenced constructions. The German word Maus
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