FROM PAPER AND INK TO ELECTRONS
A Review of The Complete MAUS
by Mark Woon
The Complete MAUS, released by Voyager, explores Art
Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust.
It combines volumes I and II of MAUS: A Survivor's Tale, with
sketches, audio interviews, videos, and supplementary documents on a
single CD to give the reader a unique look at this moving work.
Before anyone gets confused, I'd like to make it clear that
MAUS is a comic book. However, "a comic book history of the
Holocaust" isn't quite the right description for it. Such a
characterization would be asking for trouble, or at the very least,
begging for misunderstanding.
This is no Classics Illustrated/Cliff
Notes digest about Hitler and his Final Solution. In fact, Hitler
doesn't appear at all. Instead, MAUS is at once a novel, a
documentary, a memoir, an intimate retelling of the Holocaust story as
it was experienced by a single family - Speigalman's own. Or rather,
by Spiegelman's father, Vladek, who recounts the story to his son,
Art, who was born in 1948, after the war was over. The story deals as
much with his father's reminiscence as Art's tortured relationship
with his father.
While I can't heap enough praise on MAUS itself -- it has,
after all, won much critical acclaim and become a best-seller with no
less than twelve foreign editions -- the biggest question that went
through my mind while going through the CD was how it compared with
the plain old paper and ink version, and unfortunately, I found it
wanting.
I missed the visceral thrill of turning actual pages, and as a long
time fan of comic books, I couldn't help feeling that certain
stylistic aspects of the individual pages were lost in it's
translation to electronic form. Comics are a visual medium, and many
stylistic aspects are dictated by the size of the page. Due to
hardware difficulties (namely the size of your monitor), you can only
see about half a page at regular size.
While the story may flow from
one panel to another, the way each page is set up is often important,
either symbolically or aesthetically. For example, panels and images
arranged in a certain way can evoke memories of previous pages with a
similar format or image. Alternately, some graphical element may take
up the entire page, and the fact that you can only view half the page
hinders the reader from appreciating the full beauty or complexity of
the page. You can still zoom out to view the page in its entirety,
but it's still not quite the same.
In addition, I found the interface inconsistent and unintuitive.
With very little documentation (most of which referred you to
the on-line help system), even finding the on-line help system took
some time.
Only through experimentation did I realize that moving the
cursor to the top of the screen would bring up the menu bar.
Navigating between the main divisions of the CD and between different
sections of these divisions on the CD could have been made easier and
more consistent. Randomly clicking on different parts of the screen
proved to be the best way to discover new links.
However, I would still recommend The Complete MAUS although it
would be best served as a companion to the actual comic books
themselves. In addition to the entire contents of the original
MAUS: A Survivor's Tale, the CD contains over two hours of the
original interviews between Art and Vladek Spiegelman (on which the
work is based), hundreds of sketches and family photos, and rare and
previously unavailable work from Art Spiegelman.
All the extra
material serves to make the actual comic book more real and the story
more immediate. It gives you unprecedented access to the historical
and structural details behind the finished book, and all relevant data
such as archival photographs, drawings made by prisoners, and audio
and video clips are linked together very well. And it's the little
things like hearing Vladek relate what you've just read that magnifies
and enhances the power of MAUS.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: |
The Complete MAUS |
| Company: |
Voyager
|
| Cost: |
$49.95 |
System Requirements:
486SX-25 or higher processor, 640x480 256 color display,
8 MB RAM, double speed CD-ROM drive,
and sound card with speakers or head phones.
Windows 3.1 or later.
Breakdown:
Entertainment Value 4
Educational Value 3
Concept 3
Depth 4
Interface 3
Overall Score:
Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.