LIT: of comic and Narrative

Maus, by Art Spiegelman,is a retell of the holocaust with an endearing twist of crudeness. It may not be the most accurate documentation of what happened to the Jewish people during Hitler’s reign, but it isa blunt and personal depiction of humans-an animalistic one.  In the graphic novel, Spiegelman depicts the Jews as rats, perhaps a visual wordplay of “the Jewish rat”. But more importantly the characteristics of a rat summarizes the experiences of Jews during the holocaust. They had to hide in small holes in the house, they had to hoard, were not wanted in their own homes, and were chased out and hunted by Cat nazis. They were basically treated as rats. It is quite ironic how the word that was meant to insult Jews became the word that describes how they were mistreated. The qualities of resourcefulness and wittiness of a rat fits Vladek’s personality, but the unbearableness and annoyance of having a rat in the house also illustrates Vladek in his later years.  Spie...

Both Will Eisner's Contract with God and Craig Thompson's Blankets are graphic novels that use a series of short stories to compile into one big one. Despite both being dealing with faith, their style, message and content are almost completely different. Most of Eisner's Contract with God short stories are about the tenants of the Bronx. However, his most religious piece ends up being the graphic novel's title. The main story is also told differently from the other Bronx-inspired story too, having almost an uncolored picture book quality while the others use more dialog form. Well, the main story did use dialog too, but it is almost treated like a visual statement to support the narration and not really its own driving force. Hence, the first story personally reminds me of animation beat boards. Thompson's Blankets on the other hand, is a continuous novel compiled by multiple childhood memories. Although both "Contract with God" and "Blankets...