I liked Maus quite a bit. An aspect that really stuck out to me was the personal and honest quality of the story telling. The comic is told as a retelling to Spiegelman from Vladek, Spiegelman’s father, about his past for Spiegleman’s book. It cuts between the present day, 1978 Rego Park, and the father's account of his experience during World War II in Poland. I think the fact Spiegelman chose to weave these two timelines together made it feel more personal and authentic. It puts the reader in the shoes of Spiegelman as he hears his father talk about his personal story. It reminded me a lot of how my dad or mom talks about their past and how they came to the US from Vietnam during the war. They would stop and go on meandering tangents in the middle of their retelling, like Vladek does about his glass eye, his pills, or to complain about Mala. I think this is relatable to most readers, Vladek feels like a real parent. Like when he throws away Spiegelman’s jacket because it ...
I found a lot of what McCloud discussed in this comic quite intriguing and well thought out. An aspect of the reading I thought was particularly important is when he discusses the six steps in creating comics and art in general: idea/purpose, form, idiom, structure, craft, and surface. I thought it was important because I think every creative focuses on one of these stages at least once in their development. Although illustration is another form than comics, I resonated a lot with the examples he provided of different stages in growth a creator can be in. I liked how he made it clear that there isn’t a clear order to them, and that different steps can be skipped and revisited at different times. I feel like while in school I’ve gone through stages of being too overly concerned with figuring out craft and structure, which has gotten in the way of creating something that actually means something to me. Not that it has to be some grand self-important statement or something. It's jus...
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