The medium is the message: The Jerusalem Post reports from the Comics Caricatures and Animation Festival in Tel Aviv, where it finds comics have matured over the past four decades or so:

"Some may argue that comics offer superficial themes and messages, unlike books, in which characters can be well developed and complex. However, some comics have been around for 40 years and if you were to read them in chronological order, you would notice how much the comic characters in some strips have evolved through the years. And when I studied some of the work at the Festival, I was amazed to discover how cartoon strips, animation and caricatures can be filled with meaning and imagery. (Art Spiegelman's award-winning Maus, dealing with the Holocaust, is a case in point.)"