Maus Book 2: Chapter 1-2

Still really enjoying the book but now I have a few more questions. First off, why at the beginning of the second chapter does he draw every character including himself wearing a mask? Does he no longer consider himself a Jew? Another question I'm a tad curious about might hold no relevance but he says the word "jeezis". Now I understand that it's just a word and people say it, just like I've heard atheist say "Oh my god", but when he started wearing that mask I couldn't help but become curious. What really disturbed me was the descriptions that Vladek was being told about, on page 71, the bodies after they were gassed and what happened to them. It's just sickening how the Adolf Hitler convined the German Nazi's that the Jews were subhuman and deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth. Amazing how disgusted this "comic" makes me feel.

Mauz Book One

Wow. That pretty much sums up the power this Spiegelman wields in his writing. The use of animals for characters really hits home when you stop to think about how the Jews must have felt. They were nothing but prey for the German Nazis and that's why Spiegelman chose to depict the Jews as mice and Nazi's as cats. One of the most interesting details I saw occurs early on this book. On page 12 Vladek is riding a stationary bike and you can only see a potion of his arms and legs, and on his arm is the numbers tatoo that he received as a Jew during the holocaust. A very powerful image in such a small panel. A great story so far.

Blankets 3-9

The rest of this memoir I felt was really well depicted. I personally like the scene where he makes a reference to Socrates and the shadows of "reality". Throughout the entire book the use of shadows continued to be a very dominant trait to the illustrations however Raina very rarely unless she was blushing, sick, or high almost never had any kind of lines on her face. This is completely opposite to almost every other character that Thompson created. There's a few things I don't quite understand, like who painted over Craig's art in Raina's room? Was it Raina or her father? The only real part of this story that I didn't like all that much was the ending; it didn't really have too much closer and I like that in a book.

Blankets 1-2

I really enjoyed the first two chapters of Blankets. The art is very different from the panels of Funhome. In this book shadows are used quite a bit more and it gives some pieces of the art a very dark feel. Considering what occurs in the first few scenes I'm not surprised that this book was drawn this way. What their father did was tremendously cruel. When I saw that their babysitter was molesting them I was quite shocked. At times the drawings have a very sketch-like feel. Also Thompson breaks away from the use of traditional panels when he's with Raina, I like the feel it has because of the moment-to-moment transfers that are there without the use of "the gutters" as McCloud called them. I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of this book and have already gone a bit ahead.

Funhome

After finishing this memoir I can gladly say, my interest never swayed. After reading the third chapter I just couldn't put it down. The "scratchy" artistry did continue throughout the book and it was put to good use. One thing that I'm not to sure of is if Alison feels like that her father, never really bonded in the way she wanted, why would she describe him as catching her before her "fall"?
All in all a good read and a great book, I cannot wait for Ms. Bechdel's next work.