Can comics adopt a first person perspective? Most comics are written in a third person perspective, meaning you don't have a first person view the whole time. I am thinking the first person perspective can be adopted for a frame or two, but I am wondering if you can do that for the whole comics and if there's any good use case for doing this.
1 Answer
Maus is the Pulitzer Prize-winning story by Art Spiegelman that recreates his discussions with his father about his experience in the Holocaust. The main story is told in 1st-person as direct testimony from the father, within a framestory which is also told as 1st-person from the pov of the artist/son making the work years later.
The reason he choose 1st-person is likely the fact that is how Speigelman experienced the story, hearing it directly from the source – and he wanted to preserve that very personal experience.
Another possible influence is the Jewish Passover storytelling ritual called the seder. The versions I heard were told in (collective) 1st-person "we", with a parable about 4 'sons' who each ask about the seder tradition in different ways that define their character. The good son asks in 1st-person "Why do we do these rituals…?" embracing the traditions of the family, while the wicked son asks in 2nd-person "Why do you do these rituals…?" distancing himself from his ethnic identity.
In Maus, several ethnically Jewish characters (represented as mice) protest their treatment by claiming not to be Jewish, or to have completely assimilated and no longer identifying as Jewish. They are represented as mice wearing face masks of other animals.
If you want to know whether it is a 'good use case', I suggest just reading it. (Yes, it is an excellent case, hence winning a Pulitzer).
answered Feb 7, 2022 at 0:56
