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There is an old saying that goes: A picture is worth a thousand words. This statement could not be more correct; especially in the case of a book like Art Spiegalman’s, Maus. In his books Spiegalman shares his father’s experiences in surviving the holocaust. Rather than taking the conventional route, Spiegalman chooses the medium of “graphic novels” to tell his father’s story, and by doing so Spiegalman is able to share his father’s story in a way far superior to that of plain old text. He is able to do this by presenting dimensions of time and space in a way that cannot be reproduced through text. Not only this, he also gives the reader perspectives and landscapes that would take far too long to explain through text, but only a couple seconds to comprehend through a picture. The human mind is able to recognize the meaning of a visual much faster than through text because there is no ambiguity, and more room for symbolism both in the literal sense through the illustrations as well as through the dialogue of the characters. By using a comic to present his father’s story, Spiegalman can do far more justice to it, than text would ever be able to do.

One of the key concepts Spiegalman was able to illustrate is the differences in dimensions of space and time using various methods. On page fourteen of Maus I, there is a standard comic box of Art’s father Vladek narrating his past. But what is different is, how behind this panel, there is an unbounded picture of Valdek riding his bike, talking to his son in the “present”(actually 1980's). Even the description in this essay does not do justice to the juxtaposition in time that Art is able to create by showing Vladek tell Art about his past while also showing the past. This kind of e...

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... that make it superior to text, but it's also the potential that comics hold, which gives a range of possibilities for telling the story that are not available with text only scenarios.

Art Speigalman’s Maus may be a quick read, but it is no less powerful in its message than book whose pages are filled with words rather than pictures. The traditional style of writing books is not what is being challenged, text is incredible and holds a lot of value. But regarding Speigalman's book, we see that the use of the comic in not only superior to text, but also ingenious. The cohesion achieved through his drawing mixed with text, also combined with subtle hints makes Maus something special. Spiegalman’s use of a comic, and his success in doing so, is a testament to the expository capabilities that comics hold, and should serve as a template for future artists/ authors.