The insight on Maus II that I found came from Ian Johnston, from a lecture at Malaspina University-College. In his analysis of the book, one point he brought up that really caught my attention was the fact that Maus II was a comic book. He states, "Naturally, he [Art Spiegelman] could have used plenty of other forms (poetry, novel, music, essays, diary entries, and so on), but as a professional comic book artist he, understandably enough, moved to his artistic strength. That's a unique gamble (something that has contributed to the book's fame and generated some heated debate) because until Maus appeared, the popular conception of subjects fit for comic books did not generally include serious treatments of deeply-rooted historical evil like the Holocaust." I completely agree with that Johnston stated here, because at first I was very skeptical of the novel before we started reading it. I was unsure of how the holocaust would be portrayed in a comic book style because it is a very serious subject, and comic books are often seen as juvenile and fun. As Johnston said, he could have used a different form, such as a novel or diary entry, but how would that have made the story different? Would it completely change the story and how it was understood? I think that even though it is not typical, the comic book/graphic novel was a good form of the story. It made it easy to understand, between the different times it was being told (present and past), and the difference between the Jews, Germans, Amercians, etc. portrayed as animals. The whole nature of representation would have been lost, if there was not the visual of the animals in the graphic novel. If Art Spiegelman would have told his story differently, we might not have understood it they way he wanted us to. Spiegelman's art helps tell his story clearly in his graphic novel, Maus.
http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/maus.htm
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