Maus by Art Spiegelman

I became excited when I heard that the required reading  this week would be the graphic novel, Maus, by Art Spiegelman. Maus was one of those books that I would see all of  the time whenever I would go out shopping, and just by the cover alone, I was intrigued. I had always heard that it was an extremely good piece, but for one reason or another, I never got a chance to read it before. So when Maus became our next assignment in my class, the first thing I did was to go out and buy the hardcover complete edition of the book.

Maus is a story that recounts the life of the author's Polish Jewish father, Vladek, during the mid-1930s and the Holocaust through a series of interviews that the adult Art Spiegelman conducts with him over the course of the book. Despite being a take on  a true story, all of the characters are depicted as various animals, more than likely as a way to help push the idea of racism that was occurring during this time of World War II as well as possibly being more pleasing to the reader due to the idea that "Reality is too much for comics... so much has to be left out or distorted". In Maus, all Jewish people are portrayed as anthropomorphic mice. The Germans are depicted as the mice's primary predator, cats. Also, the Polish people are drawn as pigs, the French as frogs, and all Americans as dogs. As a way to show the Jewish people trying pass themselves off as polish people, the mice wear pig masks. Despite portraying humans as different animals, Spiegelman still includes the real life photos of his father and others, probably to remind us, the readers, that this was not a work of fiction.

Each chapter of Maus is divided into two sections. The first part takes place in recent times with the author visiting his elderly father, interviewing him as part of a book he is writing on his father's life, with the second part of the chapter being told in a flashback sequence. The story follows the life of Art's father, Vladek, and Art's mother and Vladeks first wife, Anja, starting with how they first met and Anja's sudden breakdown after the birth of their first son and their stay at a sanatorium in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the Nazi takeover. At first their life is perfect, but all of that soon comes crashing down, starting with Vladek being drafted into the Polish army and then captured by the Nazis. However, he is released and allowed to return home, but instead of taking him home, the Nazi's plan to kill him and numerous other Jewish soldiers that were granted freedom. Vladek is able to narrowly escape and return home. From here, Vladek, his wife and their family begin life in their now Nazi occupied Polish community. One after another, their family is killed, either due to being sent to Auschwitz and to the gas chambers or, as in the case of their son, poisoned along with other relocated children due to their caregiver refusing to allow them to be taken away. Now with just the two of them left, Vladek and Anja go on the run until, in an attempt to be smuggled into Hungary, are betrayed and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. After that, Vladeck and his wife are separated, and we are shown Vladek's life in captivity, his release, his rescue by some American soldiers and his eventual reunion with his wife, Anja.

After all of the years of anticipation, I can safely say that I was not disappointed at all when reading Maus. To me, the Holocaust is probably the one point in history that leaves me the most emotional. When I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. as a young child, I was probably actually too young to handle it, and I literally had a breakdown and had to sit down for a few minutes before going back to the exhibits. Seeing the video footage and the actual artifacts from the victims touched me deeply and left a great impact on me. Despite that, I don't regret my trip at all, and it is probably because of that experience that I have become so sensitive and emotional on this subject and the events. I thoroughly enjoyed Maus, and I think this is a perfect way to  not only introduce younger people to the horror of the Holocaust and the life of a Jew during that time, but I feel that this is a book that everyone needs to read, especially in recent years as numerous people have been trying to bury tragic events such as this, almost as if they had never happened.

Underground Comics - Cheech Wizard by Vaughn Bodē

This week I took a step into the world of Underground Comics, particularly the series Cheech Wizard by Vaughn Bodē. To be honest, when going into this comic for the first time, Cheech Wizard was exactly what I expected from an Underground Comic. Underground Comics were at their height of popularity in the late 1960's-70's. They were small, self-published comic books that, for the most part, focused on forbidden content such as heavy drug abuse and explicit sex, sometimes using popular mainstream characters such as Mickey Mouse and Popeye the Sailor Man, and content such the issues relating to the USSR and America.

The character Cheech Wizard is a wizard who wears an overly large yellow wizard's hat that covers his entire body aside from his legs, which are dressed in either red tights or footy style pajamas. Also, despite usually never seeing them, Cheech does indeed have hands, and possible a beard as well, as shown in certain stories such as when Cheech Wizard is captured by a group of frogs and forced to remove his hat.

Cheech Wizard follows the basic underground formula. Almost every story follows Cheech Wizard in situations that consist of him being highly intoxicated, very abusive to the other characters around him, or having sex or at least trying to pick up women for that purpose. However despite the majority of the stories feeling like they were recycling ideas, there were a few times were Cheech Wizard decided to branch out and try some different stories. For instance, one of the very first stories consists of its own rendition on the Great Space Race, which involved an actual, physical race to the moon between Cheech Wizard and the leader of the American Communist party, though they actually just send other people to do the dirty and risky work for them.

I did notice that while most of the art of Underground Comics is generally pretty bad, as they are made by many people who really aren't actually artists, Vaughn's style is actually quite good and very enjoyable to look at. I found Cheech Wizard to be a much more enjoyable read then some of the other Underground Comics. However, I still wasn't that interested in it as I read through it. Seeing as how Underground Comics were designed to be satirical and a way to stick a knife into the back of society, I feel that many failed in successfully conveying  what an Underground Comic truly is, despite possessing many of the same elements. Cheech Wizard I found, however, to be much more successful in its ability to convey the thoughts of the artist in interesting ways and shows what an Underground Comic should be.

I definitely feel that Underground comics aren't for me. While it was enjoyable seeing the various forms of satire and the handling of issues that would be considered outlawed for comics at the time, I personally wasn't a fan of  how some of the graphic content was depicted in some of these comics. I felt Cheech Wizard to be much more up my alley, and while I don't think I will ever pick it up again and read it, I would definitely recommended it anyone with a budding interest in the world of Underground Comics.

Contarct with God and Other Tenent stories by Will Eisner

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories is a 1978 graphic novel by Will Eisner, who is considered by many to be one of the pioneers of the graphic novel. A Contract with God is a collection of stories that mix melodrama and social realism which focus on poor Jewish characters who either live in or have a connection with a specific tenement building in New York City.

To me, one of the most outstanding aspects of this piece is the art style, a trait Will Eisner is famous for. Will Eisner focuses on depicting the emotions of the characters with the eyes.Through this, we can clearly see what is going in their minds and their emotional states. Many artists think that the mouth is enough to convey emotion, but in truth it never comes across or conveys the emotion strongly. Will Eisner proves in this work and many others like The Spirit that the eyes are actually the most important element in drawing emotion, and that the mouth should just be used as subtle way to enforce the emotion.

Another aspect of this work that stood out to me are the stories and characters. The stories focus on the tragic struggles of traditionally Jewish immigrants. I find that the first story, the one actually called A Contract with God, to be the one that affected me the most. The story follows an older traditional Hasidic Jewish man from Russia named Frimme Hersh, who, as a boy, carves a contract with God on a stone, believing that God will make life perfect for him and take care of all his worries. However, his entire life comes crashing down with the death of his adopted daughter, and he breaks all ties and renounces God. After this, his entire personality takes a complete turn around, and he proceeds to cut off his beard, lie to others, etc.., until he eventually becomes one of New York's richest men and real estate moguls, even buying the tenement he once called home and raising the tax on it. Soon he goes to a local synagogue and demands that the rabbis write up a brand new contract with God for him, believing that his contract was null and void since he wrote it on a stone when he was a boy and probably wrote it incorrectly. Reluctantly, the Rabbis give him a new contract and in his home,  Frimme Hersh, relishing in his new contract, spouts that everything will be just as it was, but better. He will live a wealthy life, get married and have a brand new daughter, who he will name Rachele, which is the exact same name of his deceased daughter. However, seconds later, Frimme's heart gives out and he collapses and dies.

Being a very religious person myself, I have seen these types of situations happen many times. Each time it brakes my heart to see someone lose their faith to such a degree or even misunderstand God's messages and commandments. Coupled with the brilliant art style, the emotions of the characters leave quite the impression on me. We the readers can see just in their faces alone how the character can go from perfectly fine to growing more and more insane. Overall, I find Will Eisner's approach to art style and his ability to convey the emotions to be very impressive.

Comic Books

As much as I love reading comic strips every Sunday morning at the kitchen table, I enjoy reading comic books far more. There are actually many differences between comic books and comic strips. Probably the most obvious difference is the length. Comic books are much longer and larger than strips, which are generally around just a few small panels on just one page. Another major difference that I noticed is that comic books can be much more graphic in their contents. While comic strips are designed to be read by a wide range of audiences and, as such, are more family friendly, comic books are aimed for more specific types of readers. For instance, Carl Bark's Donald Duck comics are generally more family friendly, but they include longer stories and more development than their comic strip counterparts. While on the other hand, a comic book such as Zero by Ales Kot, which follows the life of an ex-government spy, are aimed for a more mature audiences. Comic books such as these include graphic depictions and art such as more graphic violence where we as the reader can see gory scenes such as decapitation and guts and organs literally spilling out of another's body in all of its full, uncensored glory. Even sex scenes are shown to be quite uncensored and graphic, sometimes surprisingly more than one would think a M-17 rating would generally allow.

This last week I read various types of classic comic books intended for various audiences. Generally I focused on the DC published Action Comics series and the Tales from the Crypt series by EC Comics. Action Comics included numerous stories, including the original Superman series, the sci-fi epic Tommy Tomorrow, the jungle adventurer Congo Bill, and many more. Like the name implies, most of the content in these books focused more on action and adventure and were geared more towards young boys. The Action Comic series also included numerous other types of comics such as those depicting more average and normal people similar to the ones used in the works of the Archie Comics, while others seemed to be more of just a way to sell a type of real life product such as a specific brand of bubble gum. The Tales from the Crypt series focused more on telling various horror and noir style stories and was more for an older audience such as teens and young adults. Each story opens up with the narrator cracking open the Tales from the Crypt book and reading a section of the book to the reader. This is an example of a more graphic comic book and included stories such as a doctor who caused the suicide of two characters, and is eventually killed by the living, severed hand of one of his victims. It is later revealed that the encounter was all a hallucination caused by his own guilt, and that he actually choked himself with his own hand. Another entry takes place in a hospital wing where an old man by a window tells the other occupants of the room, who are all paralyzed and bedridden and are unable to see anything other than the hospital ceiling, what is going on outside, such as people taking walks in the park, kids playing, etc.. One day a criminal is admitted for murder so he could recover from temporary blindness before being sent to jail. Using the old man's observations, the criminal maps out an escape plan and proceeds to jump out of the old man's window, only to find everything to be bricked off and that the old man was just lying in order to lift the spirits of his fellow patients.

Overall I find more enjoyment in comic books than I do with comic strips. They are generally much longer and cover a much more diverse group of genres. There are also much more geared toward an older audience compared to a strip, which I find to be quite enjoyable since they can cover greater variety of styles, genres, stories, and even more interesting characters without having to be tied down to the limitations that exist with the comic strip.

"The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics" and the Comic Strip

This week, we dive into the world of the comic strip. Comic Strips have been a source of entertainment and cultural satire since the early 19th century and have been a mainstream form of art and a staple of American society ever since. Comic Strips are almost always found in the pages of the newspaper and have been one of the favorite past times of children as they anticipate each day's or week's issue to see what happens to their favorite characters. Many of these older comics are products of their times, so their contents could be viewed as having extremely racial stereotypes or including jokes that by today's standards may not seem as funny unless they are examined more thoroughly. Some comics such as Buck Rogers became so popular with their more continuing stories instead single weekly ones that they soon crossed into numerous other forms of art and entertainment such as animation, movies and radio shows.

There are so many examples of comic strips that it may seem overwhelming when trying to decide where to start. Thankfully, we have The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics to help us. This book is a fantastic collection of some of the most popular and possibly greatest comic strips that have helped shaped many comics, art, and culture of today. Some of these works Include The Katzenjammer Kids by Harold H. Knerr, Krazy Kat by  George Herriman and many more. The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics also gives us a brief history on comics strips through the various ages, and the included works are arranged by the date of their original publication.

Of the many works available, I mainly focused on the series Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. While Peanuts is one of those comic strips that focuses more on the philosophical, psychological, and sociological aspects that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, some of these are actually still relatable to the readers of today. This series is probably one of the best examples of a comic strip that expanded into numerous other styles such as movies, TV specials, toys, etc. Calvin and Hobbes became another very popular series in today's market after its initial debut in 1985 and chronicles the imaginary adventures between a six year old boy and his anthropomorphic stuffed tiger toy as they go on numerous adventures. This strip delves into the mind of a child, and growing up as a child with just as much imagination, I wish I had read this comic strip more.