[In the following essay, Pekar provides a generally favorable assessment of Art Spiegelman's Maus, characterizing the work as significant, but contending that Spiegelman's depiction of humans as animals detracts from the urgency of his message by perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.]

When I told Gary Groth that I was writing a 500-word review of Art Spiegelman's Maus for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he asked me if I'd be willing to write a more comprehensive criticism by expanding upon the Plain Dealer review. I agreed to add to it if the Journal would print my original review more or less intact, edited lightly to take into account the specialized readership of the Journal. This is my original review:

(Reprinted by permission from Harvey Pekar and The Cleveland Plain Dealer)

I hold to the opinion that Maus is overall a good and a significant work, primarily, because of Vladek Spiegelman's moving and informative narrative. That seems obvious. It seems equally obvious to me that Art Spiegelman has done some things in Maus that are less than admirable, and I have heard some criticism of the book expressed privately but for some reason people seem reluctant to go on record in print about its defects. Perhaps the serious tone of Maus and its subject matter cows them. Howard Chaykin, who has a reputation for being outspoken, seemed on the verge of saying something “pejorative” about Spiegelman during a recent Comics Journal interview but asked that the tape recorder be turned off at the crucial moment. A gentile comic book fan suggested to me that some people might be reluctant to criticize Maus for fear of being called anti-Semitic—that's understandable these days when right-wing Jews accuse left-wing Jews of being “self-hating Jews,” their definition of a self-hating Jews apparently being any Jew more liberal than Ariel Sharon.

Anyway, let me expand on some of my objections to Maus, beginning with the “animal metaphor”—Spiegelman's depiction of human beings as mice, cats and pigs. I've mentioned that I thought this device detracted from the immediacy of Maus and that it tended to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes; i.e., I don't know what Spiegelman thinks of Poles, but when he shows them doing something admirable and still portrays them as pigs, he's sending a mixed message. I realize that pigs are more praiseworthy than is generally recognized; nevertheless most people think it is more of an insult to be called a pig than a mouse or even a cat. I believe Spiegelman's idea of using cats, mice, and pigs in Maus is an example of someone trying to be clever just for the sake of being clever. A great deal of attention has been given to the “animal metaphor,” as if comic books have come of age with the use of metaphors. But if readers stop and think a moment they'll realize that metaphors and animal characters have been employed in comics for a long time, e.g., in the work of Carl Barks. Realistically drawn (as opposed to caricatured or idealized) human beings are seen in comics far less often than “animal metaphors.” Robert Crumb thinks, as I do, that overall Maus is a good work, but he told me that the animal characters in it looked artificial, as if they were human beings with animal heads pasted on them. Interestingly, Keiji Nakazawa in Barefoot Gen, an outstanding work dealing with the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima which preceded and anticipated Maus, uses cutesy big-eyed cartoon characters which tend to trivialize his text. This is unfortunate in that it indicates how little confidence many comic book illustrators have in their own medium. Comic books are as good on artistic medium as any that exists and it's a shame when comics creators don't realize it.

In this connection and others let me quote Spiegelman from a July 19 Louisville Times Scene magazine article about comics. He says that he used animal characters in Maus because “I couldn't imagine human beings doing that to each other.” He goes on to mention that comics cannot convey action as well as movies can, that they need “to make readers aware that they're looking at symbols.”

I differ with Spiegelman. Comics, novels, films, and still pictures (photographs, drawings, prints of various kinds) can all convey action very well in different ways; comics with written words and still pictures, film with spoken words and moving pictures alone. Stephen Crane in The Red Badge of Courage and Leo Tolstoi in War and Peace describe war more intensely, more graphically than any filmmaker I know of and they don't need pictures to do it. There have been a great many outstanding paintings and photographs done about war in which the painters and photographers did not have words at their disposal. Talented comic book writers and artists, with words and pictures at their command, can certainly convey action well. As a matter of fact that's one thing comic books are noted for—conveying action. That's why super-hero comics sell so well. Look at the work of Spain Rodriguez. He does a particularly good job of drawing action scenes in comics. Comics don't need symbolic animals characters to deal with war and violence.

But paradoxically there isn't a lot of action or explicit violence shown in Maus; most of it takes place off stage. Therefore animal characters are not needed to mute “Man's inhumanity to man.”

Questions occur to me in this regard, such as why, if Spiegelman is so offended by brutality, he prints such violent, even sadistic, stories in RAW as “I am a Cliche,” “Tenochtitlan,” “Theodore Death Head,” and “It Was the War of the Trenches.” I don't criticize him for doing this; I merely point out that it seems inconsistent with his statement abhorring inhumanity in the Louisville Times. (These stories, incidentally, contain human characters, not cats and mice.)

The major defect in Maus, one that is far more disturbing than the use of “animal metaphors,” is Spiegelman's biased, one-sided portrayals of his father, himself, and their relationship. Some reviewers of Maus have come away with the impression that Art is the hero of the book and Vladek the villain. Let me, for example, quote from Laurie Stone's Village Voice review. “Spiegelman's finest, subtlest achievement is making Art's survival of life in his family as important as Vladek and Anja's survival of the war … It doesn't dawn on Vladek that his tyrannies are a mouse-play of Nazi terrorism; nor does he question why Anja lived through Auschwitz but not her marriage to him … The irony that the Holocaust alone gave Vladek a chance to be brave and generous—to rise above his small-mindedness—isn't lost on Art … Spiegelman understands that Hitler isn't to blame for Vladek's and Anja's personalities. Long before the war Vladek was wary of other people and Anja nervous, overly compliant and clinging—she had her first nervous breakdown after the birth of Richieu. Vladek and Anja don't recover from their lives, but their son does. He lets his parents live inside him in order to let them go. And detachment has served this brave artist exceptionally well.”

I disagree with Stone's interpretation, especially assuming it is based solely on evidence presented in Maus. For one thing, there is very little meaningful material about Anja, always a subsidiary character in the book. To blame her suicide on Vladek, or Art, for that matter, as one of the family friends does is to jump to conclusions without sufficient evidence. Perhaps Art can give us more facts in Maus's second volume to clear things up, but until then there's no point in jumping to conclusions, especially as Anja's mental breakdown in the 1930s occurred at a time when she was seemingly getting along with Vladek.

I also would question whether Art is as noble and Vladek as base as Art apparently would have us believe. I see Art in Maus as a guy going after a big scoop who cares less about his father than his father does about him. Why is Art finally visiting Vladek after two years, though both live in the same city? Is it because Vladek has had two heart attacks, lost vision in one eye, and Art wants to comfort him? No, it's because Art wants a story from him. That is clearly demonstrated in the book. Art shows Vladek asking him to leave information about his bachelor lovelife out of Maus, saying that it has nothing to do with the Holocaust; Art protests but Vladek holds firm so Art promises he won't use it. But, surprise, it shows up in the book anyway.

Did Stone notice this occurrence involving her “brave” artist? The reason I mention it is not to question Art's ethics, which are of no concern to me, but to point out that it and other things make me doubt whether Art's portrayal of his father is accurate.

It's easy for American Jewish writers to parody their European-born parents, especially if they're old and sick like Vladek. I've done it and it is often justifiable because some of them have less than admirable characteristics. However, in a parody, readers recognize that distortion and exaggeration are involved in order to draw attention to these characteristics. Few people are so holy that they can't be parodied or kidded. Maus, however, is presented as a “serious,” realistic work that attempts to portray characters in a multi-dimensional manner. Why then is Vladek routinely shown to be a crazy, petty, tyrannical miser at both the beginning and end of two-thirds of Maus's chapters (the third, fourth, fifth and sixth)? At the beginning of the second chapter Vladek isn't counting his money but he is counting his pills—there's another metaphor for you. What's the reason for this overkill? Is Spiegelman afraid we'll miss the point about his feeble old father, that we might overlook two or three incidents of Vladek's cheapness so that ten must be cited? The malice in Spiegelman's portrayal of his father is so obvious to me, despite the fact that Spiegelman tries to veil it, that I question his ability to portray Vladek accurately. Is cheapness Vladek's only quality?

I am a Jew with a background similar to Spiegelman's. Many of my relatives died in the Holocaust. My parents, uncles, aunts, and some of my cousins were born in Poland. Furthermore they came from small towns and probably would seem unsophisticated and puritanical to most Americans even by comparison with Spiegelman's parents. Spiegelman's father owned a factory; my father was literally a teamster, driving a horse and wagon for a living, picking up grain from farmers and taking it to mills to be ground into flour. My folks were tight with me about money; it seemed that I had fewer toys than everyone else, that my clothes were older, if not hand-me-downs. I resented my parents; they were trying to raise me as their parents had raised them. They didn't realize treating urban American children as if they were living in a Polish shtetl could result in serious problems. They didn't understand and I didn't realize that they didn't until a lot of damage was done.

But if Eastern European Jews like my parents didn't provide their kids with a lot of toys that seemed worthless to them, they were good about other things. If possible they made sure their kids had good health care and ate well and they sacrificed so that their children could go to college. They tried to be good parents but often didn't know all that being a good parent in America involved.

I have the feeling based on the information in Maus, which is all we readers have to go on, that Art deliberately tried to make Vladek look bad, yet there are scenes in the book where Vladek does show concern for his son, despite Art's intentions. For example, once befuddled Vladek throws out an old coat that Art's been wearing, considering it shabby, and offers him another one which he believes is better. Art has a fit, accusing the old man of treating him like a kid. I imagine most people sympathize with Art during this scene, especially the way it's presented, but is what the old man did really so terrible? Yes, he misjudged his kid, something parents commonly do, but Vladek was trying to help him by giving him what he thought was a better coat. What's the big deal? Don't gentile parents throw out their children's stuff too—even their valuable baseball card and comic book collections? Some mildly unpleasant things have to be taken in stride because they're so common. It's silly for a 35-year-old man to blow up at his sick old father over an old coat.

At another point Vladek shows Art some valuable items he's stashed for him in case of an emergency. Obviously he's concerned about Art's security. During another sequence Vladek tries to honor Art by offering him a wooden clothes hanger rather than a wire one. He is made to look like a real greenhorn in the process. I think Spiegelman wants us to laugh at Vladek for his neurotic and crude ways, but I don't think holding him up to ridicule is particularly funny.

Another scene in Maus that bothers me is one in which Art discovers that his father, in a fit of depression, has destroyed Anja's diaries, written during the Holocaust, which Art wanted to use to get material for Maus. Art screams at Vladek for this, calling him “murderer.” Vladek reproaches him and Art apologizes but at the end of the chapter walks away muttering “murderer” to himself. Does Vladek deserve to be called a murderer because he destroyed Art's source material? I don't think so, based on the material presented in Maus. Understand that all along my point is not that Spiegelman has been unethical toward his father, but that he gives me plenty of reason to doubt the accuracy of his portrayal of him.

Another thing that bugs me about Maus is Spiegelman's sanctimoniousness. He tries to show himself as fair, wanting to tell people the story of the Holocaust so they will “never again” commit such atrocities. He wants us to believe there's no pettiness in him. Thus he disingenuously says to Mala, “It's something that worries me about the book I'm doing about him … in some ways he's just like the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew,” to which Mala replies, “Hah, you can say that again.” To which Art responds, “I mean, I'm just trying to portray my father accurately.” Sure. Are we to believe that Spiegelman didn't know what his father was like before he started writing Maus and now is dismayed to find that he'll have to portray him as a miserly old Jew? If Spiegelman more openly admitted his dislike of Vladek it might've been OK, but his claims of objectivity seem hypocritical.

In my initial review, I used the word “sincere” to describe Maus. What I was referring to was the sincerity of Vladek's narrative in the major part of the book, the part that makes it a good book. But the portrait Spiegelman gives us of himself and his father in the present is useless.

Let me close this piece by digressing. I've been reading more and more about comics in prestigious mainstream publications such as Atlantic and Newsweek. Some of the things I've seen have been dismaying. A Newsweek reviewer writes, “the immediate predecessors were underground comic artists of the 1960s, like the gifted R. Crumb. But the 1980s are the golden age of metafunnies: The artists have more sophistication and better technique. …”

In the August 1986 Atlantic Lloyd Rose writes, “It may be a long way from the countercultural underground ‘comix’ of the sixties and early seventies, with their explicit criticism of American society [does Rose think S. Clay Wilson was a social critic?], to the violence and hedonism of Howard Chaykin's work—a retreat from ‘relevance’ to mere entertainment. But the comic books of the eighties are probably more diverse and more geared to an adult audience than those of any previous era.”

These two statements are ridiculous. The writes hold up as shining examples of comics greats of the '80s Howard Chaykin and Frank Miller. However, Chaykin and Miller turn out simple-minded genre trash.

People like Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Frank (Foolbert Sturgeon) Stack, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Spain Rodriguez, and for that matter Spiegelman, who was active in the underground scene during the mid-'70s, are a thousand times more sophisticated than Chaykin and Miller.

Wanna talk about technique? Stack has been teaching art at a university level for many years. I doubt if Miller or Chaykin approach him as an all-around technician, though his comic book work is deceptively simple, too subtle for the Newsweek and Atlantic writers to appreciate. Or consider Crumb: Chaykin has said of him, “he's a consummate draftsman, he's an extraordinary artist. He can take anything and do wonders with it.” There were plenty of other technically accomplished artists around in the '60s and early '70s like Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, and Victor Moscoso. Apparently the Newsweek and Atlantic critics equate good technique with glitzyness and slickness.

A comics revolution occurred in the 1960s with underground comic books, but these got little recognition in the straight press. Now Atlantic, Newsweek and the big, new slick Rolling Stone are lauding 1980s costume hero schlock as indicative of a current golden age of comics, which is patently absurd. Marvel, DC, and First Comics have not ushered in anything significantly new in this decade—they continue to go after a lowest-common-denominator audience.