10 Great Comics You Didn't Understand The First Time
8. Maus
Maus may be one of the most respected comics of all time. An illustrated account of comic legend Art Spiegelman's interview with his father about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp is famous for its anthropomorphic lens of Jewish mice and Nazi cats, iconic imagery, and unflinching account of one of the worst periods of human suffering in history.
While most readers will pick up on Maus's very blatant anti-fascist message, lots of the subtext may be lost on first-time readers. For example, most readers believe the choice to depict the Jewish prisoners as mice and the Nazis as cats was simply to show the aggressive predator-prey dichotomy between the two groups. Spiegelman himself claims he was inspired by Nazi propaganda depicting Jews as "vermin."
Additionally, Spiegelman's interview framing device was meant to convey how and why certain elements of major cultural shock could be handed down to subsequent generations and what life was like living with another person's traumatic memories.