SOURCE: Pekar, Harvey. “Maus and Other Topics.” Comics Journal, no. 113 (December 1986): 54-7.

In the following essay, Pekar provides a generally favorable assessment of Art Spiegelman's Maus, characterizing the work as significant, but contending that Spiegelman's depiction of humans as animals detracts from the urgency of his message by perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.

When I told Gary Groth that I was writing a 500-word review of Art Spiegelman's Maus for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he asked me if I'd be willing to write a more comprehensive criticism by expanding upon the Plain Dealer review. I agreed to add to it if the Journal would print my original review more or less intact, edited lightly to take into account the specialized readership of the Journal. This is my original review:

Maus deals mainly with how a Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman, managed to survive the Holocaust. Substantial and effective, although not without...