 Maus looms large not only over Spiegelman 's body of work , but over the comics medium itself . While Spiegelman was far from the first to do autobiography in comics , critics such as James Campbell considered Maus the work that popularized it . The bestseller has been widely written about in the popular press and academia — the quantity of its critical literature far outstrips that of any other work of comics . It has been examined from a great variety of academic viewpoints , though most often by those with little understanding of Maus 's context in the history of comics . While Maus has been credited with lifting comics from popular culture into the world of high art in the public imagination , criticism has tended to ignore its deep roots in popular culture , roots that Spiegelman has intimate familiarity with and has devoted considerable time to promote . 
