10 Most Important Moments In Comics History

4. Maus Wins A Pulitzer, Legitimises The Form

A Contract With God was Eisner's own admitted attempt to create a literary comic, but it was Maus that was the first to be treated as such by the publishing elite. Art Spiegelman's harrowing account of the holocaust, drawing on the experiences of his father and rendered in the scratchy style of the underground comix Spiegelman had been working in since the seventies, became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize when it was finally completed in 1992. Maus is a seminal work not just because of its subject matter but also the way it tells its story, rendering the Jewish members of the concentration camps as helpless mice and the Nazis as predatory cats. The elements of biography and autobiography had been a staple of underground comix for a while, too, but it's with Maus that it broke into the mainstream, paving the way for everyone from Ghost World's Dan Clowes to Jeffrey Brown. Perhaps even more than Eisner, it was the success of Maus that lead to that conversation between Neil Gaiman and the judgemental party guest. The book made it acceptable for people in all walks of life to read comics, as it widened the gulf between the literary "graphic novel" form and the trashy "comic books", which they still wouldn't touch with a ten-foot barge pole and is a problem that's still in existence today.