Merging Past and Present in Art Spiegelman’s Complete MAUS Tales Anonymous College

In general, comic strips and graphic art are given little attention as complete works of literature. Considered to be lacking substance and novelistic qualities, graphic novels are undeservingly lumped into a category that does not account for their quality and influence. With that being said, Art Spiegelman’s MAUS Tales conquers generalizations about graphic novels and in turn, has become an example for demonstrating the ways frames, panels, and faces can produce narrative qualities inaccessible to traditional, non-pictorial novels. Uniquely, MAUS primarily weaves between two separate timelines which allow Spiegelman to tell his story in addition to his father’s. The frame-tale timeline begins in the narrative present with author Art Spiegelman interviewing his father, Vladek, about his experiences during the Holocaust for the project Artie hopes to complete. In the narrative past, Artie recounts the years leading up to the war and follows his parent’s story through their liberation from Nazi concentration camps as told to him by his father. Accompanying this detailed history are simple, minimalistic drawings that Spiegelman uses to explore real life images and to create a type of universality for all readers. With that being...