Art & Creativity Quote by Ted Rall

Rall’s take is less a verdict on Spiegelman than a little grenade tossed at the reverence that clings to Maus. By ranking Maus I over Maus II, he’s doing a critic’s favorite move: separating the work’s moral importance from its aesthetic performance. The tell is his “standard” - prose literature - a benchmark that sounds neutral but is provocatively mismatched. He’s judging a comics masterpiece by rules designed for a different sport, and he knows that friction will rile people up.

The intent reads as corrective, even contrarian: Maus can be culturally indispensable and still uneven as “a great book” in the old, prestige sense. That’s the subtext: the canonization of Maus sometimes functions like a shield, making formal critique feel impolite. Rall refuses the politeness. He’s also implicitly defending comics as criticism-worthy, not just admiration-worthy; you only impose harsh standards on art you believe belongs in the room.

Context matters: a cartoonist saying this isn’t a philistine swatting at comics from the outside. It’s an insider policing the boundary between breakthrough and perfection. Maus I has the raw propulsion of discovery - the premise and framing land with shock and clarity. Maus II, burdened with aftermath, meta-narrative, and the weight of expectation, can feel more structurally knotty, less novelistic in its momentum.

The cynicism is quiet but real: acclaim can inflate a book into a sacred object. Rall punctures that balloon, not to diminish Maus, but to insist that even sacred objects still have seams.