What can I really say about this book on the evolution of the great two part Holocaust classic, MAUS. If you haven't read it than read it first before you read this. This book is completely written from long interviews with Art Spiegelman about his family, the history of his parents surviving the Holocaust, the effect on him, the effect MAUS has had on his life and his children's life and, for me, most amazing, the actual, specific evolution of the drawings. He sees MAUS, for which he won a Puli...

This was an excellent companion piece to Maus. Most of the book consisted of a series of interviews of Art Spiegelman. In them he talks about the creative process of bringing Maus to life. He describes the struggles of trying to convert his father's story into a comic book that people would take seriously. He also talks about the many influences of books and comics on the shaping of Maus. Along with the interviews, the pages are full of his sketchbook pages, concept drawings, and rough drafts of...

I was first introduced to the magnificent Maus books when I was doing my student teaching at Shorewood High School in 1994-1995. The faculty had selected it to use as a text in an English course there. I was fascinated by the story and the painstaking attention to detail that Art Spiegelman had infused in his masterpiece. It was such a strange text that included the meta-narrative of Spiegelman's relationship with his mother and father, an interlude, "Prisoner of Hell Planet" that noted and inve...

(Note: this review covers only the contents of the book. I have yet to go through the companion DVD.)There's a page in The Complete Maus, where Art is at his drawing table, and journalists are all around him, looking for a quick soundbite. Three of the questions he's asked are, "Why [did you make a comic about] the Holocaust?" "Why [did you draw Jewish people as] mice?" and "Why [did you tell your father's story through] comics?" MetaMaus seeks to answer all three questions, and offers an avalan...

I have a (new?) intense admiration for those among us who study and know a thing deeply. Perhaps because librarianship tends to reward broad knowledge, rather than deep, or perhaps because I am at heart lazy, I don't think I know any one thing deeply. This book presents deep understanding of the creation of Maus, which I read before Goodreads could record my reviews. I recognized Maus as important, but my appreciation for it grew as I came to understand the graphic novel form (for which I owe so...

Maus I : My Father Bleeds History (1986) and Maus II : And Here My Troubles Began (1991) took Art Spiegelman 13 years to create and he had thought during the time that he would have to get the damned thing self-published. Who would want to bother with yet another Holocaust survivor tale – haven’t we had a million of those - and this one as a graphic novel – yes, a comic book, that’s right – with this jarring characterisation of Jews as mice, for God’s sake, and Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs...

My God, I've read and reread Maus plenty of times since I came to it around 2008, 2009. It's a major book. But I didn't know the efforts behind its creation. Spiegelman is such an intelligent dude, and what captivated me the most was his blind compromise for what he was doing. I really admire people who, despite everything, dedicate their entire lives to achieve what they set to do.Metamaus asks good questions, and is a unlimited source of the material behind the decisions that shaped one of the...

When I first heard about Maus, I think the novelty of the 'gimmick' (you know, that comic book about the holocaust where the Jews are mice and the Nazis are cats) both drew me to it and made me skeptical of the whole thing at the same time (I was already pretty into comics / graphic novels / whateveryouwanttocallthem at the time). In hindsight my skepticism, by virtue of lowering my expectations, set me up to be absolutely floored by that book as the story unfolded. I've been a devotee of Mr. Sp...

I can't recommend this highly enough for anyone who was ever touched by Maus. every little possible detail about the Speigelman family is here in this book. it's worth checking this out if nothing more than for the sketches and photographs included within. Speigelman is as good with words as he is with illustrations. if you happen to get the CDR disc, take the time to look through all the sketches and the recordings.

After re/reading MAUS v1 and 2, I followed up with this fascinating deep dive, METAMAUS (2011). It includes is a running dialogue with Spiegelman and English professor Hillary Chute. The volume is so full of archival materials, interviews with Art's family (i particularly enjoyed the interviews with Françoise, his wife, who plays a prominent role in MAUS) the historical context, comic history and the use of graphic medium to tell this story.He devotes a whole chapter discussing "WHY MICE?" (Hint...

MetaMaus is based off a series of interviews Hillary Chute conducted with Art Spiegelman over the course of several years. The book is set up in a Q&A format that mirrors the process Spiegelman used to interview his own father for the information in Maus. Intentionally, I'm sure. It's meant to be Spiegelman's definitive word on the intentions and creation of Maus.The book is divided into three large sections, reflecting what Spiegelman says are the three questions that he's asked most often abou...

“The advantage to using the stuff of real life is that one really is left with people who are far more interesting than what one could ever make up.” OK, when I first started reading about this book and people were saying that this book was I have to admit I was sceptical. Graphic Novel Fun Fact: Maus was the first graphic novel I ever read and anyone knows me and my reading tastes will know that I will defend the graphic novel to the death.So, needless to say, it made an impression on me. Th

Review to come

the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist talks fame, switching styles and why he doesn’t want to draw Trumpby Sam Leith @The Guardian.Main image: Startlingly protean ... clockwise from top left: Valentine’s Day cover for the New Yorker, 1993, Nude Self-Portrait, 1999, Raw, Self-Portrait with Maus Mask, sketchbook study for Four Mice, 1991, Lead Pipe Sunday, 1990. Illustration: Art SpiegelmanSat 17 Oct 2020 Early in the second volume of Maus – the graphic novel about the Holocaust that made Art Spiegelman...

Extremely insightful thoughts by Art Spiegelman about the creation of Maus. He discusses all aspects of the book: Why Mice? How to accurately portray Vladek's story? Why comics? What was the impact on Art? On Art's family?Although there were many moving moments from the book, there was one that really made me stop and think. It showed two family trees. The first family tree showed all of Art's extended family on his mother's side before WWII. The second family tree had taken out every relative w...

Spiegelman just earned an extra star as I was waiting for my tablet to start and GR to load. I can't really tell you why but I guess it's important to point out straight off that there was one star lacking on my way to my review.Nothing to do with Spiegelman himself though. Or Vladek whom I love for some g*d damn reason. I guess I have a soft gooey spot for the ones who're just such a*holes. And have survived the holocaust. Silly me, eh?Spiegelman had done a whole load of research for the Mice (...

Vol 2.... Pulitzer prize winning book.Art Spieglman takes us deep inside in concentration camps....and really shows us how life was day to day.This book is so hard to put down once you begin...It's so frickin sad --- ( we take the in horrors on probably the deepest of deepest levels, from a book about the Holocaust) The graphic depictions are the most brilliant creation of all ... everything about these illustrations works ---( their artistic design and purpose are flawless).

True to its promise written in the backcover which is "...as groundbreaking as the masterpiece whose creation it reveals", MetaMaus seals the deal as the ultimate companion to Art Spiegelman's Maus. It reverberates what its predecessor is exploding with: raw truth, tenderness and entertainment altogether with a dip of emotional wounds and pinches of humour in every page.

Sometimes I feel like a good graphic novel is a lot like pornography--I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it. I am not an artist, but I feel a bit closer to artists when I read GNs since their art is laid out a bit differently than in a painting or other more traditional medium and when you layer in narrative and word play, I feel like I am seeing a 3D rendering of how the artist works through thoughts on a subject visually. I love that. With good language and good art-a grap...

Got this out of the library so as to have a light and inconsequential read for the holiday season. It fulfilled that role admirably but it also made me want to read Maus again, which I didn't expect. Spiegelman is good company and often very amusing, but he also takes his work seriously - in this book one often leads to the other. A good example is the case of the German edition of the book. Spiegelman was very particular that all countries would reproduce the cover art exactly, which was a bit