Man or Maus: The Comic that Changed the World

Maus is an illustrated interview of the author, Art Spiegelman, asking his father about surviving the Holocaust. It's gripping, emotional, and dramatic. Everything about the comic mentally places you in Poland during the Nazi reign, even if all the characters are animals. One of my favorite parts of the graphic novel is when Vladek, Spiegelman's father, and his family have to hide in a non-Jewish friend's basement while her husband comes home from a business trip. In the basement they find a rat scurrying around, and even though they're anthropomorphic mice, the rat is depicted as not having human characteristics. It's just a rat.

Besides the events of the Holocaust, Maus also delves into Spiegelman's relationship with his father, and his father's relationship with his new wife after his first wife, Anja, who survived the Holocaust, commits suicide. It's interesting to see that Spiegelman's father is split into two separate characters: the young, spritely man doing everything to keep him and his family alive, and the grumpy (almost neglecting) father.

The comic deeply explores anti-semitism, survival during war, persecution, and the many things people will do just to survive. In a way, I think that's why Spiegelman decided to depict everyone as animals. Yes, obviously the horrific torture and murders carried out by the Germans/Cats against the Jews/Mice are inexcusable. But as illustrated in Maus, sometimes survival means betraying those who are suffering just as much as you. Is Maus effective? Of course. Reading it, you can't help but laugh at older Vladek's marital and health issues compared to the day to day struggling survival of young Vladek. His older self seems caught up in almost frivolous problems compared to what he dealt with in his younger years. The entirety of Maus reads like war, which is why I believe it became so popular. Whenever the reader meets a new character, they shouldn't expect them to last very long.

Yes, Maus is a comic book, but why can't comic books discuss real life issues as well? That's the exact question Maus challenged, and we can thank Spiegelman for all the mainstream comics today that would be considered "underground" years ago. I find it very interesting how we're reading Maus now, where the comic might be one of the most relevant to our time. Literal pogroms and attacks against Jewish communities have been rising in popularity in France over the last few years, and many are considering the new hyper conservative party, the Alt-Right, who are supporters of President Trump, to be a group of racists and anti-semites.

I remember being bullied as a little kid for "looking too Jewwy" to be a Catholic, and my older brother went through similar torment for having "Jew curls." While I don't necessarily fit the typical "Jewish" look, I do have Jewish ancestry and family members who are practicing Jews. My father, who very much fits the typical "Jewish-looking" stereotype, is constantly stopped at airports and travel destinations for no reason other than supposed "suspicious activity." It's scary thinking that roughly six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, with so many novels, stories, and historical texts teaching us how horrifying and inhumane the Holocaust was, yet there are Nazi sympathizers and anti-semites out in the world.

While my childhood torment is nowhere near what the Jews in Europe faced during WWII, the fact that people make still make Jew jokes, as if the Holocaust never happened, is frightening. If Maus was made to be relatable, it sure is relatable now. Spiegelman perfectly blended history and art to create an outstanding piece of fiction that not only redefined comics, but redefined literature.

Underground Comics

Naughty, disturbing, funny, crude, political: all of these words can describe underground comics. I never in my life expected to see Mickey Mouse fuck Minnie while held captive by pirates in a blimp, but life is full of surprises. And at least they kept their gloves on, protection is key. I mainly read a bunch of Air Pirates and Robert Crumb stuff, but also a bit of Gay Comix and Tijuana Bibles. Air Pirates hit way too close to home by sexualizing (and humanizing) the popular Disney characters I grew up on. While the majority of Crumb's work was interesting, to say the least. I read Whiteman, which is the tale of a husband and father who goes camping in the woods and is captured by a yeti. He soon falls in love with a yeti woman, and adventure and sex (and adventurous sex) ensue.

Something that surprised my about many of the underground comics was how not-so-underground they felt to me. Obviously sex and drugs and many political things have changed and society has evolved to be more accepting, but I found it hilarious how the majority of the stories in Gay Comix weren't even sexual: no tits, no dicks. Just gays. And I found something reassuring in that, knowing that LGBT+ people weren't being sexualized too much in the comics, or seen as gross items. Rather, I feel like underground comics celebrated gay culture. I also really enjoyed the absurdity of some of the comics. My favorite has to be Frogman, a deep sea diver who can swim in the air but can only breathe out of water for so long to have an affair with a married woman. Trouble ensues when she has to suddenly move farther inland, away from any large water source. I thought this was the funniest shit when I read it, and honestly it's something that I could see being published today with the huge horde of comical comics (I'm punny) out in the world.

It was also cool being able to see where a lot of modern, mainstream comics were inspired. If Saga by Brian K. Vaughan were to be published in the 70's or 80's, it would totally be considered an underground comic! No one in that time would ever believe a mainstream comic in book stores all over the U.S. would have a breastfeeding woman on the cover. But lo' and behold: it exists. Another popular comic going around that would be an absolute hit back in the days of the underground comics is Sex Criminals. The tale of two ordinary people who just so happen to stop time when orgasming. I always considered something to be "underground" if I hid it from my parents. If I'd be afraid of my Mom finding something I hid under my bed, then it was definitely "underground."

Blankets

Blankets by Craig Thompson is a highly personal graphic novel. It's a coming of age story about falling in love for the very first time. The autobiographical comic follows Thompson in (mostly) his teenage years, bullied all his life and believing that Religion is his calling until one day he meets Raina, a girl he encounters at a Christian camp for teens. The comic explores sexual and religious exploration, as well as coming to terms with love just not working out. I grew up in an extremely Italian Catholic household where I was homeschooled until high school. It's needless to say I had my family's religion forced in my mouth like a strep throat test, and my gag reflex is horrible. I never necessarily felt any connection with God, or Jesus, or any part of "my" religion, but I felt obligated to go because people told me I had to. And of course, like any white Catholic boy, I was an altar server, which made my parents think it would be perfect if I went into religious studies. What they didn't expect was for me to be a gay, gender confused, blue haired art student who doesn't particularly care about religion. I'm delving into my forced Catholic background because, when I was in Catholic high school, I read Blankets for the first time. It was the most relatable work I'd ever read in my life, and it validated to me that I wasn't crazy for not believing in what I was raised to believe. While I may not be a straight Christian fundamentalist with long hair and a sad, long distance relationship, I definitely understood all the social awkwardness, the bullying, and the unsureness of what's up there beyond space.

What I've found out after reading the comic is that when Thompson's parents read the book and found out about their son's true feelings towards religion and how they were depicted in the book, they didn't talk to him for six years. I've had points like that with my parents, where we completely disagree on matters and they never attempt to see my side of things. Or they do, and pretend like they didn't hear it. All in all, Blankets is one of my favorite works because I understand the Christian guilt, that's beat into us at a horrifically young age, is what makes us so afraid to enjoy life at times. And while it's just another wall I have to break through, breaking things is fun, and I like to have fun.

Emergence of the Comic Book

Pretty soon after comic strips grew in popularity, longer story driven comics began to come into play. Carl Barks' work for Disney was on the rise, as well as the growth of "costumed characters"/super heroes like Batman and Captain America. Even over seas, comics like Tintin were blowing up. What really caught my eye with this weeks reading in particular was EC Comics' Tales from the Crypt collections.

Tales from the Crypt are illustrated anthologies of short horror stories. They range from the mysterious, the campy, and the outright disgusting. Sure, the "scary" stories may not be as effective now as they were back in the day when horror wasn't as normalized as it is now, but the tales sure are interesting. The style of the comic is super realistic, which I assume is to make all the horrors seem real enough that they could actually happen. From swamp zombies to murderous werewolves at summer camp, Tales from the Crypt was for our parents what Goosebumps was for us.

My favorite story from the collection had to be Madness at Manderville. It was the first comic I had read for class that featured a female lead character who wasn't hyper sexualized or only there for the male gaze. The story tells of a woman who is seemingly going crazy, hearing noises in the night and seeing strange lights through the window. Her husband pushes her to seek psychological help as he claims none of these noises or sights are real. They arrive at the asylum where it's shown that the wife isn't crazy, it's the husband for not hearing the noises which are just birds and traffic outside, and not seeing the lights in the window which are headlights from a car coming down the street. I thought it was an incredibly interesting twist seeing how women, especially mentally ill women, were treated back in the day. A lot of the main characters in the stories are women, and I found that particularly interesting. Sometimes they're the protagonist, sometimes they're the villain, but from what I read they were never put there just to be there. They're characters with motivations, drives, goals, and wants. They also have fears, and in some stories a strong will to survive.

Comic Strips: Charlie Brown and the Unimaginable Depression

The comic strip has been seen as a staple of modern American culture since the 20th century. As a little kid, I would wait seemingly forever for my father to finish reading the newspaper, which he'd then throw to me so I could read the comics section. My favorites were Calvin and Hobbes and Undertown. When I got older, I got into buying volumes of older comic strips like Peanuts and Archie. As the years went by, I found myself with a pretty decent comic strip collection. I've always been interested in comics because I thought they were cute and visually appealing. It wasn't until reading Scott McCloud that I realized the power of icons and seeing oneself within the comic world were why I was so interested as a child. A lot of comics, especially Peanuts, were relatable to me as a child (and I'm sure were relatable to children the world over). What I found most interesting about comic strips was how secretly educational they were/are about the real world. So many Peanuts strips showed Charlie Brown going through existential crises that no normal 6 year old goes through, such as the meaning of life, where do we go when we die.

Charlie Brown is a very interesting child, he enjoys typical childlike thinks but thinks like a depressed adult. I think that's why Peanuts has been around for so long: when people read the strips as a child they could relate, and now that they're adults they can still relate just in a different way. I think duality like that in comic strips is why some have survived the years and why many haven't. Having a specific audience is great, but when multiple groups age groups can relate, there's a long lasting effect that these strips and characters have.