It is well over a decade since Art Spiegelman won a Pulitzer prize for Maus, his work on the Holocaust - the first comics artist to be so recognised. The event marked the arrival of the “graphic novel” as a literary form to be noticed. No longer would comics struggle to be taken seriously - or so it seemed.
Maus wasn’t the first graphic novel and clever, subversive adult comics have a long history. But the Pulitzer inspired others and proved that comics that appealed to a wide readership didn’t just have to be about Spandex-clad superheroes delivering the planet from sinister eggheads. They could be more ambitious, more grown-up, worthy of critical attention.
