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QC Forum Book Group - Maus Discussion Thread
Ikrik:
Those are absolutely horrible questions and in fact, I hate most reading discussion questions you find in the back of books or are easily found on the web. Instead of actually facilitating interesting discussion about the book, they ask you to relate it to what's going on now, or to relate it to yourself, or to simply analyze a few character traits in the book. So instead of having an interesting discussion you're sitting there gawking at these questions going "is that really the best they can come up with?"
Now, Art Spiegelman released Maus in two parts and the rumor that I hear all the time is that he was angry about An American Tail which is also about Jewish mice. I can't confirm this rumor but it's not really important. Since the first volume was released in 1986 and the second released in 1991, do you think the impact of the story was at all affected due to having to wait five years for the conclusion?
Do you think that because the people are portrayed as animals it opens itself up to a younger audience or do you think that it remains unaffected.
Were comics/graphic novels considered at this time to be important works of art or were they simply all comics? Did this affect the turning point where comics became a valuable and recognized art form?
Lines:
I fail. I still haven't read it.
JD:
try your local library
Ikrik:
--- Quote from: Jeans on 28 Jun 2010, 18:00 ---My favourite part of discussing is bitching at the people who make an effort to get the ball rolling.
--- End quote ---
So I criticize the questions that aren't contributing to a discussion anyways and offer some that I felt might actually contribute to discussion? And someone else has called them out as well. And then you don't add anything other than calling us out?
Art Spiegelman helped organize an exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery called Krazy two years ago and it was pretty cool. It was about Comics, Anime, and Video Games. It was interesting to see how more than 2/3 of the exhibit was given to comics that were featured in his magazine and the video game aspect was....kind of pathetic. The anime was relatively well done but was shown in like...a single room with Paprika, Gundam, and a few other things shown. There was also a few things of animation shown but for some reason they chose to show Over The Hedge as an example of 3-D animation.
a pack of wolves:
To be fair, you'd be hard pushed to find a significant name in the more experimental end of comics from the '80s who didn't appear in RAW. Not to mention its superb record of reprinting work by earlier giants like Winsor McCay and George Herriman. If an exhibition was otherwise poorly curated but had a load of prime RAW material it would still be absolutely fantastic.
--- Quote from: Ikrik on 28 Jun 2010, 14:51 ---Now, Art Spiegelman released Maus in two parts and the rumor that I hear all the time is that he was angry about An American Tail which is also about Jewish mice. I can't confirm this rumor but it's not really important. Since the first volume was released in 1986 and the second released in 1991, do you think the impact of the story was at all affected due to having to wait five years for the conclusion?
--- End quote ---
It wasn't quite on that schedule. Maus was mostly serialised in RAW before the collected editions (the final issue has the penultimate chapter, I'm assuming the last one first appeared in And Here My Troubles Began). I'm not sure when Vol.1 No.2 of RAW was published but it must have been roughly a decade between Maus' first appearance and the conclusion. It's hard to gauge how the publishing schedule would have impacted on a contemporary reader. I can remember reading My Father Bleeds History and some of the later RAW chapters without access to And Here My Troubles Began but I wasn't reading them as they came out, and the massive impact it had on me is impossible to separate from my being ten or eleven at the time and this being the first holocaust narrative I'd ever read. It's hard not to think of it as one coherent whole now, although I can recall the desire for more, to see the story finished. A bit like two of Primo Levi's great autobiographical accounts of the holocaust, If This Is A Man and The Truce. More than a decade separates the publishing of the two books but I've only ever encountered them as one volume, and I can't imagine them separated.
--- Quote from: Ikrik on 28 Jun 2010, 14:51 ---Do you think that because the people are portrayed as animals it opens itself up to a younger audience or do you think that it remains unaffected.
--- End quote ---
Probably. Anthropomorphised animals are a familiar concept for children and I think that coupled with comics being seen as a suitable form for something a child would read. Whether or not it's inherently more accessible for children I think it does make it something more people would find it appropriate to give a child to read. I remember I was told I could read Maus in RAW but I shouldn't be reading the rest of it (naturally I lied and lapped up Kaz, Lynda Barry, Chris Ware and the rest).
--- Quote from: Ikrik on 28 Jun 2010, 14:51 ---Were comics/graphic novels considered at this time to be important works of art or were they simply all comics? Did this affect the turning point where comics became a valuable and recognized art form?
--- End quote ---
I'm not sure comics are a valued art form in the same way novels and cinema are. Maus, with its widespread critical recognition, has certainly helped but there also seems to be a problem in that a large number of other comic books to receive widespread and serious critical attention subsequently are in some way similar to Maus (Fun Home as biography, Sacco's accounts of conflicts etc) or are by Alan Moore. There's a ton of reasons why that's the case, although it does seem to be getting better.
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