Art Speigelman: Maus

I finished reading Maus today by Art Speigelman. Maus follows the hardships his Father faced during the holocaust before and during World War 2 as well as Art's strained relationship with his father in the present. The strip ran from 1980 - 1991 in Raw magazine before being collected into a 'Graphic Novel' format.

One of the more interesting themes within the story is that of Racism which Speigelman deals with by portraying different races as varying animals. Jewish people are drawn as mice whilst Germans are cats and Polish people are pigs. He overcomes issues of Jewish people pretending to be German by having them wear cat like masks, therefore giving a physical representation to the act.

Speigelman originally planned to use expressive styles and detailed imagery for the story but instead chose to work with a more direct and minimalist approach. Characters are portrayed with dots for eyes and a simple line for a mouth etc.

I personally felt that with the work being text driven this usually made the pages feel overwhelmingly busy, however I suppose with such a large powerful story to tell this is but a small issue.