Maus (comics) - Publication History

Publication History

The first chapter of Maus appeared in December 1980 in the second issue of Raw. A new chapter of the story appeared in every issue as a small insert in the oversized magazine until it came to an end in 1991. Every chapter except the last appeared in Raw.

Spiegelman struggled to find a publisher for Maus, but in 1986, Pantheon collected the first six chapters into a book, after a rave New York Times review of the work-in-progress. The volume was titled Maus: A Survivor's Tale and subtitled My Father Bleeds History. Spiegelman said he was eager to have the book come out early, even if incomplete, in order to avoid comparisons with the animated film An American Tail from Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, which he believed was inspired by Maus. The book found a large audience, partially because it was sold through regular bookstores, rather through comic shops in the direct market that comic books were normally sold through.

The book was difficult not only for critics and reviewers to classify, but also for booksellers, who needed to know on which shelves to place it. Pantheon pushed for the term "graphic novel". Spiegelman was not comfortable with the term, however, as many book-length comics were being referred to as "graphic novels" whether or not they were novelistic. He also suspected the term was being used in an attempt to validate the comics form, rather than to describe the contents of the books. Spiegelman later came to accept the term, and with Drawn and Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros successfully lobbied the Book Industry Study Group in the early 2000s to include "graphic novel" as a standardized category in bookstores.

The last five chapters were collected in 1991 in the second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began. Pantheon later collected the two volumes into soft- and hard-covered two-volume boxed sets and single-volume editions. In 1994, The Voyager Company released The Complete Maus on CD-ROM, a collection which, in addition to the original comics, contained Vladek's taped transcripts, filmed interviews with Art, sketches, and other background material. The CD-ROM was based on HyperCard, a now-obsolete Macintosh-only application. In 2011 Pantheon Books published a companion to The Complete Maus entitled MetaMAUS, with further background material, including filmed footage of Vladek. The centerpiece of the book is an extensive Spiegelman interview conducted by Hillary Chute. It also has interviews with his wife and children, sketches, photographs, family trees, assorted artwork, and a DVD with video, audio, photos, and an interactive version of Maus.

Spiegelman dedicated the book to his brother, Richieu, who died during the Holocaust and whom he had never met; and his first daughter, Nadja. A photograph of Spiegelman's brother also prefaces the book. Its epigraph is a quote from Adolf Hitler: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human".