For a period of time I lost complete interest in my baseball cards, as I wished to focus my attention on collecting the entire GPK's series.
I still find it strangely charming that these were issued for kids to collect.
I even liked the movie when it came out. When I think back on that I wonder why I liked the movie. Maybe it was the completely random musical sequence that occurred?
Then in college the Maus I and Maus II books were on the reading list for my suitemate's honor's rhetoric course. After he raved about how good the books were, I picked up my own copies and read them in a weekend.
I've never been too interested in either comic books or graphic novels, but I am glad I trusted my suitemate's opinion. Despite the speed at which I read these they are not easy to handle. Spiegelman forces you to look at the holocaust in a new way by the simple tranformation of different nationalities into different animals.
Entertainment Weekly has a story in this issue about In the Shadow of No Towers, the new graphic novel by Spiegelman. It was released on September 7 -- in perfect time for the anniversary -- and is currently the sixth best seller on Amazon.com.
EW says that,
Like Maus -- the groundbreaking graphic novel about his father's experience in the Holocaust, a 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner -- the new strips exist at the intersection of global events and personal history.
His story starts by depicting the morning of the attack, which led to him running to his daughter's high school.
Generally I am glad that artists are attempted to give us another perspective, possibly understanding, of what happened during and after the attack. Specifically, I'm glad that Spiegelman with his emotional sophistication, yet playfulness, has offered the world his account.
He says that, "[i]n my head, it was as visceral as having those towers fall behind my back." With as powerful as Maus was in his description of what happened to his father, I am excited to discover what he delivers with In the Shadow of No Towers.
