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154-477: 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

308-435: A garbage man a 'sanitation engineer' - and second because a 'graphic novel' is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine". Writer Neil Gaiman , responding to a claim that he does not write comic books but graphic novels, said the commenter "meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually

462-438: A trade paperback ( Pocket Books , March 1978), which described itself as "the first graphic novel". Issues of the comic had described themselves as "graphic prose", or simply as a novel. Similarly, Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by writer Don McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy ( Eclipse Books , August 1978) — the first graphic novel sold in the newly created " direct market " of United States comic-book shops —

616-535: 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

770-407: 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,

924-447: A UK best-seller list. Outside North America, Eisner's A Contract with God and Spiegelman's Maus led to the popularization of the expression "graphic novel" as well. Until then, most European countries used neutral, descriptive terminology that referred to the form of the medium, not the contents or the publishing form. In Francophone Europe for example, the expression bandes dessinées — which literally translates as "drawn strips" –

1078-649: 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

1232-430: A category in book stores in 2001. The term is not strictly defined, though Merriam-Webster 's dictionary definition is "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book ". Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, and even non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as graphic novels (similar to

1386-560: A collection of Frank Miller's four-part comic-book series featuring an older Batman faced with the problems of a dystopian future; and Watchmen (1986-1987), a collection of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ' 12-issue limited series in which Moore notes he "set out to explore, amongst other things, the dynamics of power in a post-Hiroshima world". These works and others were reviewed in newspapers and magazines, leading to increased coverage. Sales of graphic novels increased, with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns , for example, lasting 40 weeks on

1540-512: 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

1694-452: A doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece". Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's Blackmark (1971), a science fiction / sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam Books , did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition ( ISBN   978-1-56097-456-7 ) calls it, retroactively, the first American graphic novel. The Academy of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with

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1848-507: 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

2002-409: A hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening". Responding to writer Douglas Wolk 's quip that the difference between a graphic novel and a comic book is "the binding", Bone creator Jeff Smith said: "I kind of like that answer. Because 'graphic novel' ... I don't like that name. It's trying too hard. It is a comic book. But there is a difference. And the difference is, a graphic novel

2156-629: 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

2310-421: 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

2464-564: A major publisher of alternative and underground cartoonists' work. As of the 2010s, reprints of early underground comix continue to sell alongside modern underground publications. The 2010s Foreskin Man , a comic book published to protest against circumcision , has been referred to as "comix" by some reviewers. British cartoonists were introduced in the underground publications International Times ( IT ), founded in 1966, and Oz founded in 1967, which reprinted some American material. During

2618-475: 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

2772-536: 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

2926-588: 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

3080-507: 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

3234-604: 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

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3388-546: 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

3542-424: A perfect time to retire terms like "graphic novel" and "sequential art", which piggyback on the language of other, wholly separate mediums. What's more, both terms have their roots in the need to dissemble and justify, thus both exude a sense of desperation, a gnawing hunger to be accepted. Author Daniel Raeburn wrote: "I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension - the literary equivalent of calling

3696-515: A periodical titled Graphic Story Magazine in the fall of 1967. The Sinister House of Secret Love #2 (Jan. 1972), one of DC Comics ' line of extra-length, 48-page comics, specifically used the phrase "a graphic novel of Gothic terror" on its cover. The term "graphic novel" began to grow in popularity months after it appeared on the cover of the trade paperback edition (though not the hardcover edition) of Will Eisner 's A Contract with God (October 1978). This collection of short stories

3850-480: 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

4004-427: 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

4158-510: 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

4312-680: A renaissance in the genre in the United Kingdom , through titles like Brain Damage , Viz , and others. After the death of King Features Syndicate editor Jay Kennedy , his personal underground comix collection was acquired by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Ohio. The University of California, Berkeley 's Bancroft Library has a large underground comix collection, especially related to Bay Area publications; much of it

4466-420: A revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. His works include Passionate Journey (1919). American Lynd Ward also worked in this tradition, publishing Gods' Man , in 1929 and going on to publish more during the 1930s. Other prototypical examples from this period include American Milt Gross 's He Done Her Wrong (1930),

4620-443: 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

4774-675: 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

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4928-475: A similar format. Columnist and comic-book writer Steven Grant also argues that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko 's Doctor Strange story in Strange Tales #130–146, although published serially from 1965 to 1966, is "the first American graphic novel". Similarly, critic Jason Sacks referred to the 13-issue "Panther's Rage"—comics' first-known titled, self-contained, multi-issue story arc—that ran from 1973 to 1975 in

5082-539: A special 1971 Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature, Blackmark is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and word balloons , published in a traditional book format. European creators were also experimenting with the longer narrative in comics form. In the United Kingdom, Raymond Briggs was producing works such as Father Christmas (1972) and The Snowman (1978), which he himself described as being from

5236-480: A strip about a trio of "freaks" whose time is spent attempting to acquire drugs and avoid the police, both of which first appeared in the self-published Feds 'N' Heads in 1968. Wilson's work is permeated by shocking violence and ugly sex; he contributed to Zap and created the infamous The Checkered Demon , a portly, shirtless being who is frequently called upon to kill the various demented bikers, pirates, and rapists who populate Wilson's universe. Spain worked for

5390-479: 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

5544-472: A visit to London, American comics artist Larry Hama created original material for IT . The first UK comix mag was Cyclops , started in July 1970 by IT staff members. In a bid to alleviate its ongoing financial problems, IT brought out Nasty Tales (1971), which was soon prosecuted for obscenity. Despite appearing before the censorious Old Bailey Judge Alan King-Hamilton , the publishers were acquitted by

5698-574: A wordless comic published as a hardcover book, and Une semaine de bonté (1934), a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst . Similarly, Charlotte Salomon 's Life? or Theater? (composed 1941–43) combines images, narrative, and captions. The 1940s saw the launching of Classics Illustrated , a comic-book series that primarily adapted notable, public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. Citizen 13660 , an illustrated, novel length retelling of Japanese internment during World War II ,

5852-761: A year after A Contract with God though written and drawn in the early 1970s—was labeled a "graphic novel" on the cover of Marvel Comics' black-and-white comics magazine Marvel Preview #17 (Winter 1979), where Blackmark: The Mind Demons premiered: its 117-page contents remained intact, but its panel-layout reconfigured to fit 62 pages. Following this, Marvel from 1982 to 1988 published the Marvel Graphic Novel line of 10" × 7" trade paperbacks—although numbering them like comic books, from #1 ( Jim Starlin 's The Death of Captain Marvel ) to #35 ( Dennis O'Neil , Mike Kaluta , and Russ Heath 's Hitler's Astrologer , starring

6006-514: 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

6160-503: 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

6314-473: Is a novel in the sense that there is a beginning, a middle and an end". The Times writer Giles Coren said: "To call them graphic novels is to presume that the novel is in some way 'higher' than the karmicbwurk (comic book), and that only by being thought of as a sort of novel can it be understood as an art form". Some alternative cartoonists have coined their own terms for extended comics narratives. The cover of Daniel Clowes ' Ice Haven (2001) refers to

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6468-536: 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

6622-486: 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

6776-449: 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

6930-533: Is funny about rape and murder?" Because of his popularity, many underground cartoonists tried to imitate Crumb's work. While Zap was the best-known anthology of the scene, other anthologies appeared, including Bijou Funnies , a Chicago publication edited by Jay Lynch and heavily influenced by Mad . The San Francisco anthology Young Lust ( Company & Sons , 1970), which parodied the 1950s romance genre, featured works by Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman . Another anthology, Bizarre Sex (Kitchen Sink, 1972),

7084-509: Is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book , which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks . Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term graphic novel in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha . The term gained popularity in

7238-427: 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

7392-654: 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

7546-412: Is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel Comics—because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel  ..." Glen Weldon, author and cultural critic, writes: It's

7700-493: Is used, while the terms stripverhaal ("strip story") and tegneserie ("drawn series") are used by the Dutch/Flemish and Scandinavians respectively. European comics studies scholars have observed that Americans originally used graphic novel for everything that deviated from their standard, 32-page comic book format, meaning that all larger-sized, longer Franco-Belgian comic albums , regardless of their contents, fell under

7854-584: The Bijou Funnies book highlighted comics by Lynch, Green, Crumb, Shelton, Spiegelman, Deitch, Skip Williamson , Jay Kinney , Evert Geradts , Rory Hayes , Dan Clyne, and Jim Osborne. Similarly, and around this time, the publishing cooperative And/Or Press published The Young Lust Reader (1974), a "best-of" collection from Griffith and Kinney's Young Lust anthology, and Dave Sheridan and Fred Schrier 's The Overland Vegetable Stagecoach presents Mindwarp: An Anthology (1975). And/Or Press later published

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8008-518: The East Village Other before becoming known within underground comix for Trashman and his solo titles Zodiac Mindwarp and Subvert . Williamson created his character Snappy Sammy Smoot , appearing in several titles. Underground horror comics also became popular, with titles such as Skull (Rip Off Press, 1970), Bogeyman (San Francisco Comic Book Company, 1969), Fantagor (Richard Corben, 1970), Insect Fear (Print Mint, 1970), Up From

8162-558: 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

8316-566: The Black Panther series in Marvel's Jungle Action as "Marvel's first graphic novel". Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting serials of popular strips such as The Adventures of Tintin or Asterix led to long-form narratives published initially as serials. In January 1968, Vida del Che was published in Argentina, a graphic novel written by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and drawn by Alberto Breccia . The book told

8470-480: 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

8624-618: The Print Mint , Rip Off Press , Last Gasp , and Krupp Comic Works (Kitchen Sink Press). For much of the 1970s, Rip Off Press operated a syndication service , managed by cartoonist and co-owner Gilbert Shelton , that sold weekly comix content to alternative newspapers and student publications . Each Friday, the company sent out a distribution sheet with the strips it was selling, by such cartoonists as Shelton, Joel Beck , Dave Sheridan , Ted Richards , Bill Griffith , and Harry Driggs (as R. Diggs). The syndicate petered out by 1979; much of

8778-823: The U.S. Supreme Court , in Miller v. California , ruled that local communities could decide their own First Amendment standards with reference to obscenity. In the mid-1970s, sale of drug paraphernalia was outlawed in many places, and the distribution network for these comics (and the underground newspapers) dried up, leaving mail order as the only commercial outlet for underground titles. In 1974, Marvel launched Comix Book , requesting that underground artists submit significantly less explicit work appropriate for newsstands sales. A number of underground artists agreed to contribute work, including Spiegelman, Robbins and S. Clay Wilson , but Comix Book did not sell well and lasted only five issues. In 1976, Marvel achieved success with Howard

8932-546: 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

9086-575: The environmental movement . Anarchy Comics focused on left-wing politics , while Barney Steel's Armageddon focused on anarcho-capitalism . British underground cartoonists also created political titles, but they did not sell as well as American political comics. Artists influenced by the underground comix scene, who were unable to get work published by better-known underground publications, began self-publishing their own small press, photocopied comic books, known as minicomics . The punk subculture began to influence underground comix. In 1982,

9240-537: The underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb and his full-length comic Lenny of Laredo was published in 1965. Another underground paper, the East Village Other , was an important precursor to the underground comix movement, featuring comic strips by artists including Crumb, Shelton, Kim Deitch , Trina Robbins , Spain Rodriguez , and Art Spiegelman before true underground comix emerged from San Francisco with

9394-418: 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

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9548-577: The "bottomless abyss of strip cartooning", although they, along with such other Briggs works as the more mature When the Wind Blows (1982), have been re-marketed as graphic novels in the wake of the term's popularity. Briggs noted, however, that he did not like that term too much. In 1976, the term "graphic novel" appeared in print to describe three separate works: The following year, Terry Nantier , who had spent his teenage years living in Paris, returned to

9702-585: The 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller" ( Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller ), penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab. In the same year, Gold Medal Books released Mansion of Evil by Joseph Millard. Presaging Will Eisner's multiple-story graphic novel A Contract with God (1978), cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman wrote and drew

9856-529: The 1980s, sexual comics came into prominence, integrating sex into storylines rather than utilizing sexual explicitness for shock value. The first of these features was Omaha the Cat Dancer , which made its first appearance in an issue of the zine Vootie . Inspired by Fritz the Cat , Omaha the Cat Dancer focused on an anthropomorphic feline stripper. Other comix with a sexual focus included Melody , based on

10010-423: The 1980s; he could be considered part of a "second generation" of underground-type cartoonists, including such notables as Mike Diana , Johnny Ryan , Bob Fingerman , David Heatley , Danny Hellman , Julie Doucet , Jim Woodring , Ivan Brunetti , Gary Leib , Doug Allen , and Ed Piskor . Many of these artists were published by Fantagraphics Books , which was founded in 1977 and through the 1980s and '90s became

10164-454: The Cat , and Mr. Natural . Crumb also drew himself as a character, caricaturing himself as a self-loathing, sex-obsessed intellectual. While Crumb's work was often praised for its social commentary, he was also criticized for the misogyny that appeared within his comics. Trina Robbins said: "It's weird to me how willing people are to overlook the hideous darkness in Crumb's work... What the hell

10318-581: The Deep (Rip Off Press, 1971), Death Rattle (Kitchen Sink, 1972), Gory Stories (Shroud, 1972), Deviant Slice (Print Mint, 1972) and Two Fisted Zombies (Last Gasp, 1973). Many of these were strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt . The male-dominated scene produced many blatantly misogynistic works, but female underground cartoonists made strong marks as well. Edited by Trina Robbins , It Ain't Me, Babe , published by Last Gasp in 1970,

10472-775: The Duck , a satirical comic aimed at adult audiences that was inspired by the underground comix scene. While it did not depict the explicit content that was often featured in underground comix, it was more socially relevant than anything Marvel had previously published. By the mid-1970s, independent publishers began to release book-length collections of underground comics. Quick Fox/Links Books released two important collections, The Apex Treasury of Underground Comics , published in 1974, and The Best of Bijou Funnies , released in 1975. The Apex Treasury featured work by Crumb, Deitch, Griffith, Spain, Shelton, Spiegelman, Lynch, Shary Flenniken , Justin Green , Bobby London , and Willy Murphy ; while

10626-505: 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

10780-644: 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

10934-448: 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

11088-441: 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

11242-402: 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

11396-452: The Rings (1978) and Forbidden Zone (1980). The animation sequences – created by Help! contributor Terry Gilliam – and surrealistic humor of Monty Python's Flying Circus have also been partly attributed to the influence of the underground comix scene. Despite the form's influence on the culture at large, however, by 1972, only four major underground publishers remained in operation:

11550-570: The United States and formed Flying Buttress Publications , later to incorporate as NBM Publishing ( Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine ), and published Racket Rumba , a 50-page spoof of the noir - detective genre, written and drawn by the single-name French artist Loro. Nantier followed this with Enki Bilal 's The Call of the Stars . The company marketed these works as "graphic albums". The first six issues of writer-artist Jack Katz 's 1974 Comics and Comix Co. series The First Kingdom were collected as

11704-608: The alternate press. Wally Wood published witzend in 1966, soon passing the title on to artist-editor Bill Pearson . In 1969, Wood created Heroes, Inc. Presents Cannon , intended for distribution to armed forces bases. Steve Ditko gave full vent to his Ayn Rand -inspired philosophy in Mr. A and Avenging World (1973). In 1975, Flo Steinberg , Stan Lee's former secretary at Marvel Comics , published Big Apple Comix , featuring underground work by ostensibly "mainstream" artists she knew from Marvel. Film and television began to reflect

11858-562: The appeal of underground comix was their lack of censorship: "People forget that that was what it was all about. That was why we did it. We didn't have anybody standing over us saying 'No, you can't draw this' or 'You can't show that'. We could do whatever we wanted". Between the late 1920s and late 1940s, anonymous underground artists produced counterfeit pornographic comic books featuring unauthorized depictions of popular comic strip characters engaging in sexual activities. Often referred to as Tijuana bibles , these books are often considered

12012-519: 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

12166-407: The backlog catalogs of Casterman and Les Humanoïdes Associés . Some in the comics community have objected to the term graphic novel on the grounds that it is unnecessary, or that its usage has been corrupted by commercial interests. Watchmen writer Alan Moore believes: It's a marketing term... that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me ... The problem

12320-508: 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

12474-585: The book as "a comic-strip novel", with Clowes having noted that he "never saw anything wrong with the comic book". The cover of Craig Thompson 's Blankets calls it "an illustrated novel". Underground comix Robert Crumb , Gilbert Shelton , Barbara "Willy" Mendes , Trina Robbins and numerous other cartoonists created underground titles that were popular with readers within the counterculture scene. Punk had its own comic artists like Gary Panter . Long after their heyday, underground comix gained prominence with films and television shows influenced by

12628-432: 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

12782-451: 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

12936-438: The book, "Art Spiegelman doesn't draw comic books". After its Pulitzer Prize win, it won greater acceptance and interest among academics. The Museum of Modern Art staged an exhibition on the making of Maus in 1991–92. Graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art . The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice

13090-410: The broader realms of artistic and literary culture. Arcade lasted seven issues, from 1975 to 1976. Autobiographical comics began to come into prominence in 1976, with the premiere of Harvey Pekar 's self-published comic American Splendor , which featured art by several cartoonists associated with the underground, including Crumb. Comics critic Jared Gardner asserts that, while underground comix

13244-493: 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

13398-545: 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

13552-644: The city's Mission District was "underground headquarters": living and operating out of The Mission in that period were Gary Arlington , Roger Brand , Kim Deitch , Don Donahue , Shary Flenniken , Justin Green , Bill Griffith & Diane Noomin , Rory Hayes , Jay Kinney , Bobby London , Ted Richards , Trina Robbins , Joe Schenkman , Larry Todd , Patricia Moodian and Art Spiegelman . Mainstream publications such as Playboy and National Lampoon began to publish comics and art similar to that of underground comix. The underground movement also prompted older professional comic book artists to try their hand in

13706-684: The city, with Ron Turner 's Last Gasp and the Print Mint based in Berkeley . Last Gasp later moved to San Francisco. By the end of the 1960s, there was recognition of the movement by a major American museum when the Corcoran Gallery of Art staged an exhibition, The Phonus Balonus Show (May 20-June 15, 1969). Curated by Bhob Stewart for famed museum director Walter Hopps , it included work by Crumb, Shelton, Vaughn Bodé , Kim Deitch , Jay Lynch and others. Crumb's best known underground features included Whiteman , Angelfood McSpade , Fritz

13860-718: The closet, along with bong pipes and love beads, as Things Started To Get Uglier". One of the last major underground titles was Arcade: The Comics Revue , co-edited by Spiegelman and Bill Griffith . With the underground movement encountering a slowdown, Spiegelman and Griffith conceived of Arcade as a "safe berth", featuring contributions from such major underground figures as Robert Armstrong , Robert Crumb , Justin Green , Aline Kominsky , Jay Lynch , Spain Rodriguez , Gilbert Shelton , and S. Clay Wilson (as well as Griffith and Spiegelman). Arcade stood out from similar publications by having an editorial plan, in which Spiegelman and Griffith attempted to show how comics connected to

14014-496: The comics community after the publication of Will Eisner 's A Contract with God (1978) and the start of the Marvel Graphic Novel line (1982) and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman 's Maus in 1986, the collected editions of Frank Miller 's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons ' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using graphic novel as

14168-420: 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

14322-555: 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

14476-629: 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

14630-479: The distribution of underground comix changed through the emergence of specialty stores. In response to attempts by mainstream publishers to appeal to adult audiences, alternative comics emerged, focusing on many of the same themes as underground comix, as well as publishing experimental work. Artists formally in the underground comix scene began to associate themselves with alternative comics, including Crumb, Deitch, Griffith, Lynda Barry , and Justin Green . In

14784-723: The drug culture, and imitated LSD -inspired posters to increase sales. These titles were termed "comix" in order to differentiate them from mainstream publications. The "X" also emphasized the X-rated contents of the publications. Many of the common aspects of the underground comix scene were in response to the strong restrictions forced upon mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority , which refused publications featuring depictions of violence, sexuality, drug use, and socially relevant content, all of which appeared in greater levels in underground comix. Robert Crumb stated that

14938-611: 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

15092-462: The end of the 19th century (including such later Franco-Belgian comics series as The Adventures of Tintin in the 1930s). As the exact definition of the graphic novel is debated, the origins of the form are open to interpretation. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end. It originated as the 1828 publication Histoire de Mr. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer , and

15246-619: The first issue of Zap Comix . Zap and many of the first true underground comix publications began with reprints of comic strip pages which first appeared in underground papers like the East Village Other , the Berkeley Barb , and Yarrowstalks . In February 1968, in San Francisco, Robert Crumb published (with the help of poet Charles Plymell and Don Donahue of Apex Novelties ) his first solo comic, Zap Comix . The title

15400-481: The first paperback collections of Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead comics. By this time, some artists, including Art Spiegelman , felt that the underground comix scene had become less creative than it had been in the past. According to 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

15554-513: The first to use it. These included the Time magazine website in 2003, which said in its correction: "Eisner acknowledges that the term 'graphic novel' had been coined prior to his book. But, he says, 'I had not known at the time that someone had used that term before'. Nor does he take credit for creating the first graphic book". One of the earliest contemporaneous applications of the term post-Eisner came in 1979, when Blackmark 's sequel—published

15708-471: The first underground comic. Shelton's own Wonder Wart-Hog appeared in the college humor magazine Bacchanal #1-2 in 1962. Jack Jackson 's God Nose , published in Texas in 1964, has also been given that title. One guide lists two other underground comix from that year, Vaughn Bodē 's Das Kampf and Charles Plymell 's Robert Ronnie Branaman . Joel Beck began contributing a full-page comic each week to

15862-450: The four-story mass-market paperback Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book ( Ballantine Books #338K), published in 1959. By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page, magazine -format comics novel, His Name Is... Savage (Adventure House Press) in 1968—the same year Marvel Comics published two issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man in

16016-435: 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

16170-491: 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

16324-462: 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

16478-553: The heading. Writer-artist Bryan Talbot claims that the first collection of his The Adventures of Luther Arkwright , published by Proutt in 1982, was the first British graphic novel. American comic critics have occasionally referred to European graphic novels as "Euro-comics", and attempts were made in the late 1980s to cross-fertilize the American market with these works. American publishers Catalan Communications and NBM Publishing released translated titles, predominantly from

16632-443: 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

16786-467: The idea of a "drawn novel" in a letter to the newspaper Le Figaro and started work on a 360-page wordless book (which was never published). In the United States, there is a long tradition of reissuing previously published comic strips in book form. In 1897, the Hearst Syndicate published such a collection of The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault and it quickly became a best seller. The 1920s saw

16940-410: 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

17094-505: The influence of underground comix in the 1970s, starting with the release of Ralph Bakshi 's Crumb adaptation, Fritz the Cat , the first animated film to receive an X rating from the MPAA . Further adult-oriented animated films based on or influenced by underground comix followed, including The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat and Down and Dirty Duck . The influence of underground comix has also been attributed to films such as The Lord of

17248-426: The jury. In the wake of its own high-profile obscenity trial, Oz launched cOZmic Comics in 1972, printing a mixture of new British underground strips and old American work. When Oz closed down the following year cOZmic Comics was continued by fledgling media tycoon Felix Dennis and his company, Cozmic Comics/H. Bunch Associates, which published from 1972 to 1975. While the American underground comix scene

17402-432: The life story of Sylvie Rancourt and Cherry , a comedic sex comic featuring art similar in style to that of Archie Comics . In 1985, Griffith's comic strip Zippy the Pinhead — which originally appeared in underground titles — was syndicated as a daily feature by King Features . Between 1980 and 1991 Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus was serialized in Raw , and published in two volumes in 1986 and 1991. It

17556-515: 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

17710-617: The manner in which dramatic stories are included in "comic" books). The term is also sometimes used to distinguish between works created as standalone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form. In continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as The Ballad of the Salty Sea (1967) by Hugo Pratt or La rivolta dei racchi (1967) by Guido Buzzelli , and collections of comics have been commonly published in hardcover volumes, often called albums , since

17864-472: The material produced for it was eventually published in the company's long-running anthology Rip Off Comix , which had debuted in 1977. Griffith's strip, Zippy , which had debuted in 1976 as a weekly strip with the syndicate, was eventually picked up for daily syndication by King Features Syndicate in 1986. Critics of the underground comix scene claimed that the publications were socially irresponsible, and glorified violence, sex and drug use. In 1973,

18018-503: 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

18172-516: The movement and with mainstream comic books, but their legacy is most obvious with alternative comics . The United States underground comics scene emerged in the 1960s, focusing on subjects dear to the counterculture : recreational drug use , politics, rock music , and free love . The underground comix scene had its strongest success in the United States between 1968 and 1975, with titles initially distributed primarily though head shops . Underground comix often featured covers intended to appeal to

18326-482: 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

18480-458: 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

18634-425: 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

18788-561: The pornographic anthologies Jiz and Snatch (both Apex Novelties, 1969). The San Francisco Bay Area was an epicenter of the underground comix movement; Crumb and many other underground cartoonists lived in San Francisco 's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the mid-to-late 1960s. Just as importantly, the major underground publishers were all based in the area: Don Donahue 's Apex Novelties , Gary Arlington 's San Francisco Comic Book Company , and Rip Off Press were all headquartered in

18942-494: The predecessors of the underground comix scene. American comix were strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics and especially magazines edited by Harvey Kurtzman , including Mad (which first appeared in 1952). Kurtzman's Help! magazine, published from 1960 to 1965, featured the works of artists who would later become well known in the underground comix scene, including R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton . Other artists published work in college magazines before becoming known in

19096-658: The radio and pulp fiction character the Shadow , and released in hardcover). Marvel commissioned original graphic novels from such creators as John Byrne , J. M. DeMatteis , Steve Gerber , graphic-novel pioneer McGregor, Frank Miller , Bill Sienkiewicz , Walt Simonson , Charles Vess , and Bernie Wrightson . While most of these starred Marvel superheroes , others, such as Rick Veitch 's Heartburst featured original SF/fantasy characters; others still, such as John J. Muth 's Dracula , featured adaptations of literary stories or characters; and one, Sam Glanzman 's A Sailor's Story ,

19250-449: 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

19404-459: 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

19558-558: 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

19712-648: 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

19866-443: 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

20020-511: The story of Che Guevara in comics form, but the military dictatorship confiscated the books and destroyed them. It was later re-released in corrected versions. By 1969, the author John Updike , who had entertained ideas of becoming a cartoonist in his youth, addressed the Bristol Literary Society, on " the death of the novel ". Updike offered examples of new areas of exploration for novelists, declaring he saw "no intrinsic reason why

20174-565: 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

20328-623: The term "graphic novel" in Capa-Alpha #2 (November 1964), a newsletter published by the Comic Amateur Press Alliance, and again in an article in Bill Spicer 's magazine Fantasy Illustrated #5 (Spring 1966). Kyle, inspired by European and East Asian graphic albums (especially Japanese manga ), used the label to designate comics of an artistically "serious" sort. Following this, Spicer, with Kyle's acknowledgment, edited and published

20482-423: 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

20636-494: The underground scene. Early underground comix appeared sporadically in the early- and mid-1960s, but did not begin to appear frequently until after 1967. The first underground comix were personal works produced for friends of the artists. Perhaps the earliest of the underground comic strips was Frank Stack 's (under the pseudonym Foolbert Sturgeon ) The Adventures of Jesus , begun in 1962 and compiled in photocopied zine form by Gilbert Shelton in 1964. It has been credited as

20790-534: 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

20944-638: 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

21098-705: Was Brainstorm Comix (1975–1978), which featured only original British strips (mostly by Bryan Talbot ). Hassle Free Press was founded in London in 1975 by Tony and Carol Bennett as a publisher and distributor of underground books and comics. Now known as Knockabout Comics , the company has a long-standing relationship with underground comix pioneers Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb , as well as British creators like Hunt Emerson and Bryan Talbot . Knockabout has frequently suffered from prosecutions from UK customs, who have seized work by creators such as Crumb and Melinda Gebbie , claiming it to be obscene. The 1990s witnessed

21252-422: 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 ,

21406-469: Was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives of ordinary people in the real world based on Eisner's own experiences. One scholar used graphic novels to introduce the concept of graphiation, the theory that the entire personality of an artist is visible through his or her visual representation of a certain character, setting, event, or object in a novel, and can work as a means to examine and analyze drawing style. Even though Eisner's A Contract with God

21560-403: Was a true-life, World War II naval tale. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman 's Pulitzer Prize -winning Maus (1986), helped establish both the term and the concept of graphic novels in the minds of the mainstream public. Two DC Comics book reprints of self-contained miniseries did likewise, though they were not originally published as graphic novels: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986),

21714-450: Was associated with countercultural iconoclasm, the movement's most enduring legacy was to be autobiography. In the late 1970s, Marvel and DC Comics agreed to sell their comics on a no-return basis with large discounts to comic book retailers; this led to later deals that helped underground publishers. During this period, underground titles focusing on feminist and Gay Liberation themes began to appear, as well as comics associated with

21868-583: Was beginning to decline, the British scene came into prominence between 1973 and 1974, but soon faced the same kind of criticism that American underground comix received. UK-based underground cartoonists included Chris Welch, Edward Barker , Michael J. Weller , Malcolm Livingstone, William Rankin (aka Wyndham Raine), Dave Gibbons , Joe Petagno, Bryan Talbot , and the team of Martin Sudden, Jay Jeff Jones and Brian Bolland . The last UK underground comix series of note

22022-493: Was called a "graphic album" by the author in interviews, though the publisher dubbed it a "comic novel" on its credits page. "Graphic album" was also the term used the following year by Gene Day for his hardcover short-story collection Future Day ( Flying Buttress Press ). Another early graphic novel, though it carried no self-description, was The Silver Surfer ( Simon & Schuster/Fireside Books , August 1978), by Marvel Comics' Stan Lee and Jack Kirby . Significantly, this

22176-434: 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

22330-601: Was financially successful and almost single-handedly developed a market for underground comix. Within a few issues, Zap began to feature other cartoonists — including S. Clay Wilson , Robert Williams , Spain Rodriguez , and Gilbert Shelton — and Crumb launched a series of solo titles, including Despair , Uneeda (both published by Print Mint in 1969), Big Ass Comics , R. Crumb's Comics and Stories , Motor City Comics (all published by Rip Off Press in 1969), Home Grown Funnies ( Kitchen Sink Press , 1971) and Hytone Comix ( Apex Novelties , 1971), in addition to founding

22484-542: Was first published in English translation in 1841 by London's Tilt & Bogue, which used an 1833 Paris pirate edition. The first American edition was published in 1842 by Wilson & Company in New York City using the original printing plates from the 1841 edition. Another early predecessor is Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by brothers J. A. D. and D. F. Read, inspired by The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck . In 1894, Caran d'Ache broached

22638-467: Was followed by an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and a Pulitzer Prize for Spiegelman in 1992. The novel originated from a three-page story first published in an underground comic, Funny Aminals [ sic ], (Apex Novelties, 1972). Alternative cartoonist Peter Bagge was strongly influenced by underground comics, and was reciprocally admired by Crumb, for whom Bagge edited Weirdo magazine in

22792-452: Was influenced by science fiction comics and included art by Denis Kitchen and Richard "Grass" Green , one of the few African-American comix creators. Other important underground cartoonists of the era included Shelton, Wilson, Deitch, Rodriguez, Skip Williamson , Rick Griffin , George Metzger , and Victor Moscoso . Shelton became famous for his characters Wonder Wart-Hog , a superhero parody, and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers ,

22946-531: Was published by a traditional book publisher and distributed through bookstores, as was cartoonist Jules Feiffer 's Tantrum ( Alfred A. Knopf , 1979) described on its dust jacket as a "novel-in-pictures". Hyperbolic descriptions of longer comic books as "novels" appear on covers as early as the 1940s. Early issues of DC Comics ' All-Flash , for example, described their contents as "novel-length stories" and "full-length four chapter novels". In its earliest known citation, comic-book reviewer Richard Kyle used

23100-425: Was published in 1946. In 1947, Fawcett Comics published Comics Novel #1: "Anarcho, Dictator of Death", a 52-page comic dedicated to one story. In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digest-sized , adult-oriented "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust , a film noir -influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover,

23254-432: Was published in 1978 by a smaller company, Baronet Press, it took Eisner over a year to find a publishing house that would allow his work to reach the mass market. In its introduction, Eisner cited Lynd Ward's 1930s woodcuts as an inspiration. The critical and commercial success of A Contract with God helped to establish the term "graphic novel" in common usage, and many sources have incorrectly credited Eisner with being

23408-515: 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

23562-405: Was the first all-female underground comic; followed in 1972 by Wimmen's Comix (Last Gasp), an anthology series founded by cartoonist Patricia Moodian  [ fr ] that featured (among others) Melinda Gebbie , Lynda Barry , Aline Kominsky , and Shary Flenniken . Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli 's Tits & Clits Comix all-female anthology debuted in 1972 as well. By 1972–1973,

23716-476: 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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