“Yes, life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn’t the best people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was random!”
Spiegelman's Maus is often credited with changing the public perception of what comics were. Lawrence L. Langer, is his New York Times article, stated plainly, "Art Spiegelman doesn't draw comics" (Langer, 1991). He describes Maus as "a serious form of pictorial literature...It resists defining labels" (Langer, 1991). He specifically likens it to a fable, with the animal characters allowing distance between the reader and horrific subject matter.
Spiegelman started creating Maus right around the time the term "graphic novel" was coming into popular lexicon. He showed that comics were more than just superheroes, which was the main content of the mainstream comic publishers of the time--Marvel and DC. Maus is true literature, just in the medium of graphic novel; many credit Spiegelman with defining what graphic novels could be, along with cartoonist Will Eisner.
In 1992, Maus won the Pulitzer Prize for Special Citations and Awards--Letters (Pulitzer.org). It is the first, and remains the only, graphic novel to win any Pulitzer Prize. Following this, Maus took the academic world by storm; the vast amount of pieces and works studying Maus far surpasses any academic work on any other comic or graphic novel (Loman, 2010, p. 217). Many scholars agree that Spiegelman is a masterful writer and pioneer in the comics/graphic novel medium.
Langer, L. L. (December 6, 1998). A Fable Of The Holocaust. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/spiegelman-maus2.html
Special Citations and Awards. Pulitzer.org. Retrieved from https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/260
Loman, A. (2010). The Canonization of Maus. In Williams, Paul; Lyons, James (eds.). The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts. University Press of Mississippi.