#spiegelman

[longreads]

Anatomy of the Mask: A Reading List on Superhero Comics

The adventures of superheroes reveal a lot about the people who created them — and the marginalized communities they represent.

“Spiegelman is best known for his independent graphic novel Maus, which retold his father’s experience surviving the Holocaust. Yet, when he compared then-president Donald Trump to the Red Skull, the fascist supervillain leader of a Nazi organization known as Hydra, Marvel balked. Demanding that a Jewish writer revise his material for the sake of remaining apolitical felt particularly disingenuous, given that Captain America made his 1941 debut punching Hitler in the face on the cover of his first issue. Over the years, Marvel writers had used superheroes to explore myriad political and social issues — sometimes explicitly, sometimes by merely existing. The success of 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and the Spidersona trend that followed it, attests to the positive impact diverse representation can have on audiences.

Superhero comics aren’t only political, but they’ve nearly always been political. Since Superman’s debut first made the genre mainstream, superheroes and their stories have advocated for social justice. And while some writers (and the corporations that employ them) may have lost sight of this reality, the communities these heroes represent can see when the forces that be abdicate the responsibility the heroes gladly shoulder. The essays collected below explore how superhero comics capture the lived experiences of marginalized communities — as well as how some comics have only served to stigmatize them.”

In his new reading list, “Anatomy of the Mask,” Joshua N. Miller introduces the creators behind several popular superheroes — and the marginalized communities they represent. 

[fromevertonow]

I read Maus last year in college and it was one of the most provoking texts I had to read that year which also made it the best. I appreciated the honesty that went into this book, it didn’t sugarcoat a single thing about the Holocaust and the horrors the survivors had to go through. It was eye opening and made you think. The portrayal of people as animals was the most Spiegelman could’ve done to put everything in perspective for the biggest baby on earth and apparently that baby is Tennessee. Wake the fuck up and learn assholes.

[shini-shikinami-blog]

[eyegiene]

Comics on the horizon, Fall 2022‼️ #spiegelman #gilberthernandez #emilferris #danclowes #jaimehernandez my kind of comix strip ! check out my fall class here https://eyegiene.sdsu.edu/2022/fall/eyegasm22.html (at San Diego State University) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdW_N8RLXB8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sadoldjonny]

Justin Green, Who Put Himself Into His Underground Cartoons, Dies at 76

“Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” his epic autobiographical story of Catholic guilt and neurosis, “made comics grow up,” a colleague said.

[hotrodsmitty]

#Maus #Spiegelman https://www.instagram.com/p/CZWzp41FFrW/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fromevertonow]

I’ve just finished Maus by Art Spiegelman, and wow. A quick read, really. A heavy subject, but still very interesting!

[jolecho]

Art Spiegelman and Disney’s Mouse Appeal

Throughout the fall of 2020, I had to read numerous books for my class called Comics and History. So far in the semester, I have read Freud for Beginners, The Ways of Seeing, Kafka, Magritte, The Medium is the Massage, Ghost World, Latinx Comic Book Storytelling, and a book called Maus. Whilst being in the class in the semester, there was a discussion one day during a Zoom class, Professor William Nericcio brought up a unique way of describing comics. Mr. Nericcio brought up that comics tend to put in humor in their work despite the topic being unfitting in some way. Another way to say this is, comics put humorous pictures, or dialogues into various topics whether they were dark, sexual, depressing, or just plain uncomfortable to be addressed in everyday activities.

 With this discussion in mind, I can resonate this “generalization” into the book Maus by Art Spiegelman. Before I go into depth, the book Maus is about a survivor’s experience, an autobiography during the dark history of the Holocaust. It talks about genocide, mass murder, racism, and tragedies that had occurred in history that is not exactly an optimistic topic to be brought up in our everyday lives. However, in page 133, Spiegelman includes a conversation that he had with his father, Vladek Spiegelman, talked about how the book would be interesting even to the people that do not generally read comics such as himself. The father then said that the book will make Art Spiegelman a famous man, just like “what’s-his-name” later to be found out that the father meant Walt Disney. Art Spiegelman, amused, reenacted this experience into his comic, even putting down what he said that he wanted to “write this conversation down before [Spiegelman] forget it”.

Now why is this relevant? This page in the comic book I think is the reason why the characters in Maus are all animals that acts like human beings. As many may know, Disney has a lot of animals in their movies and comics; even their mascot is a mouse named Mickey. Because there are animals in the comics and movies, the content gives more appeal to the audiences, and I think Spiegelman input animals into this book despite the topic being as dark as the Holocaust: to appeal the readers and “lighten” up so that it is more engaging and also beguiling. This can be seen with the characters along with their respective race: the Polish being the pigs, the Germans being the cats, and the Jews-being the same race as the person that survived the event- being a mouse, funnily relating to the Disney’s signature mascot Mickey Mouse. The author even goes to the point where he would rhyme the book’s title Maus to mouse. Overall, this resonance connects to the concept that comics are uniquely bringing humor to every topics or stories that can be inappropriate and irregular in other genres or novels.