Maus is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. It depicts a families escape from the Nazi's and the different obstacles that entailed. It portrays the main characters of the family as mice, the police and medical staff as pigs, and the Nazi's as cats. The character depiction is an entire discussion in and of itself because of the ingenuity but I am only going to focus on one aspect of it. I am going to discuss something that was brought to my attention by Scott McCloud.
Scott McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics. He has made comics and graphic novels very accessible to the intellectual which is a revolutionary endeavor. From a semi early age, I always thought that comic books were for nerds and children. My journey through the Shepherd University communications department has definitely changed my opinion but not so much as Scott McCloud's book. It shows the intellectual and academic value of reading and understanding comic books as well as foster a growing appreciation of their entertainment value.
One of the aspects that McCloud discusses is Sequential Art. This refers to the ability of the artist to add body to a scene or to tell an entire story, simply by putting images together as shown in the image to the left. This can be done by putting hundreds of images together to explain very minute details, or by putting just two images together and giving a sense of the action. Maus is full of examples. It would be very difficult to portray every aspect of the story in Maus through images, but the artist is able to shorten the space drastically by strategically placing images in the story line. One of my favorite examples is when Lucia comes to visit Vladek and in the space of two frames goes from having a standing conversation to grovelling on the floor. The intriguing part is that the story is not slowed down or made more confusing at all. In fact it gives a sense of the urgency that she feels and makes us feel for her as a character. The artist's ingenuity is phenomenal.
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