398 MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE
in-jokes about convention hyjinx. Some of these appear in Matt’s work; Peepshow , fi rst
published in 1992, shifts in narrative style to tell these longer stories.
Th e Poor Bastard (1997) collects issues (#1 through #6) in relaying the story of
Matt’s move to Canada and his relationship and subsequent messy breakup with his
girlfriend Trish; this collection is suff used with all the things that make Joe Matt’s work
so cringingly autobiographical. His “Jam Sketchbook” appeared in 1998, collecting a
series of collaborative illustrated works with other notable comics creators including
Julie Doucet, Adrian Tomine, and Will Eisner. Fair Weather (2002) details an event in
Matt’s childhood (issues #7 through #10) and Spent , published fi ve years later, focuses
most specifi cally on Matt’s fascination with pornography.
Nominated for four Harvey Awards for his work on Peepshow , including Best
New Talent in 1990, Matt has also worked as a colorist for a number of mass-market
superhero comics including Batman/Grendel — Limited Series (which earned him a 1989
Harvey nomination). In 2004, there was discussion of translating Th e Poor Bastard into
an animated series for HBO to be produced by Matt and David X. Cohen; these plans
never came to fruition and the series never appeared. Matt currently lives and works in
Los Angeles, where he is working on a book-length work about living in L.A.
Anne Th alheimer
MAUS: A SURVIVOR’S TALE. Art Spiegelman’s two-volume account (1986, 1991) of
his parents’ experiences in Poland during World War II and his own struggles to come
to terms with the identity of a second-generation Holocaust survivor won him a special
Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Among the book’s many visual innovations are its dense black-
and-white line drawings, its mixing of images from multiple time periods within the
same panel, and its allegorical representations of human beings as animals: Nazis as cats,
Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the French as frogs, and Jews as mice. Th e covers to
both volumes feature expressionless mice, dressed in human clothing, cowering beneath
a swastika surmounted by a stylized cat’s face. Th is symbolic choice represents not only
the predator-prey relationships existing among ethnic groups during World War II, but
also the anonymity that history imposes upon even its most devastated victims.
In 1972, Spiegelman drew the fi rst “Maus” strip, a three-page exploration of the
stories that his father Vladek told him about the Holocaust (collected in Breakdowns ,
1977 and 2008). Its animal characters and references to Nazi brutality and extremist
survival measures are familiar to readers of Maus. However, the fi rst strip evidences a
more conventionally cartoonish style and traditional representation of father-son roles.
Here, a relatively young, healthy Vladek narrates his memories to 10-year-old Artie,
tucking him into bed at the end of the strip with the admonition, “It’s time to go to
sleep, Mickey,” rather than the heartbreaking admission, “I’m tired from talking, Richieu
[Vladek’s fi rst son, who died during the war], and it’s enough stories for now.. .” that
closes the second volume of Maus. In this later rendering, an adult Artie stands listen-
ing to these words while looking down at the elderly Vladek, already falling asleep in
his bed. Th e work continued to evolve between 1980 and 1986 during its serialization
