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The comic-book industry was built from the ground up at the height of the Great Depression by enterprising American Jews who fashioned a pantheon of the world's most famous superheroes

Four-Color Forebears

“My father conceived the idea of taking the Sunday pages, folding them over, and folding them once again, and ending up with something roughly the size of today's comic book."
--William M. Gaines

1933. FDR was inaugurated, Hitler became chancellor of Germany, television was patented, and an unemployed Jewish novelty salesman named Max Gaines (née Max Ginzberg) was pondering how on earth he would be able to feed his wife Jessie and their two young children, who were living with him at his mother's house in the Bronx. To lift his spirits, he began reading some Sunday funnies stored in his mother's attic. Suddenly the idea hit him: if he enjoyed reading old comic strips like "Joe Palooka," "Mutt and Jeff," and "Hairbreadth Harry," maybe the rest of America would, too!

Gaines shared his brainstorm with his good friend Harry L. Wildenberg, who worked at Eastern Color Printing. For years, Eastern had been toying with the idea of reprinting Sunday comic strips as tabloid-size giveaways. Gaines proposed a different approach--reducing the comic-strip reprints to half tabloid-size and selling them. Persuaded to take a chance on the concept, in February 1934 Eastern published Famous Funnies #1, Series 1, the first American comic book to be sold to the public. The 35 thousand copies shipped to department stores throughout the country quickly disappeared from the shelves. ECP followed in May with Famous Funnies #1, Series 2, the first monthly comic book to be sold on newsstands. Issue #8 turned a profit (earning $2,664.25), and an industry was born. By 1941 thirty comic-book publishers were producing 150 different titles monthly, with combined sales of 15 million copies and a youth readership of 60 million, making the emerging comic-book industry one of the few commercial bright spots of the Great Depression.

Things were not going as well for Max Gaines. Though he had helped to reverse ECP's fortunes, one day late in 1934, for reasons unknown, he was unceremoniously sacked. But hearing that the McClure Newspaper Syndicate had a pair of idle two-color presses, the ever-resourceful innovator struck a deal: if McClure would let him use its presses to print a new comic-book title, he'd split the proceeds 50-50. McClure agreed, and Popular Comics was born. Like Famous Funnies, Popular Comics material consisted of reprinted color newspaper strips--old favorites like Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, and Gasoline Alley--but Gaines made sure his reprints were brighter. Thanks to its vivid colors and the inclusion of "Scribbly"--a token original strip about a boy cartoonist, modeled on its Jewish creator Sheldon Mayer--Popular Comics outshone the competition, but the heyday of reprint comics was fast coming to a close.

Anticipating that the novelty, and thus the appeal, of recycled newspaper comics would be short-lived, Gaines was ever on the lookout for something new, and he wasn't alone. Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, the publisher of National Allied Publications (soon to be known as National Periodicals, then Detective Comics Inc., then DC Comics), had already begun scouting for original strips with new characters and new ideas, which, not insignificantly, would also reduce his reprint royalty payments to newspaper syndicates.

DC's first title, New Fun Comics, appeared in February 1935. Imitating Sunday humor and adventure comics, the new title was by all accounts mediocre--that is, until the appearance in New Fun #6 (October 1935) of Doctor Occult, the brash supernatural "ghost detective" who battled vampires, ghosts, and sorcerers. The brainchild of two prolific, innovative Jews from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), Doctor Occult captured the imagination of young readers with his supernatural exploits. Then, for three issues (starting with issue #14 in October 1936 of what was now More Fun Comics), Siegel and Shuster dressed their usually trenchcoat-and-fedora-clad Doctor Occult in blue tights and a red cape, endowing him with temporary superpowers, such as super strength and flight. They were trying out ideas they'd developed for another character which, for the past three years, they'd unsuccessfully shopped around to various newspaper syndicates and comic-book companies. That character was "Superman."

In 1937 McClure employee Sheldon Mayer told his boss Max Gaines about this caped, muscled "Superman" in red-and-blue tights who could lift an automobile above his head, causing criminals to scatter like frightened rats. The strip had been rejected by every New York newspaper as being too fantastic even for juvenile audiences, but Mayer assured Gaines (now DC Comics' print broker) that this "Man of Tomorrow" would be "the next big thing" in comic books. Gaines agreed, and within days he, Mayer, Siegel, and Shuster were hastily cutting and pasting "Superman" strips into comic-book format. Gaines then sent the boards on to his friend Harry Donenfeld, who with Jack Liebowitz had recently become publishers of DC Comics, taking over the company from the financially strapped Wheeler-Nicholson. Donenfeld was skeptical, yet he placed great stock in Gaines' impeccable marketing instincts. And then there was Siegel and Shuster's impressive track record--not only had they created Doctor Occult, but the even more successful brawling private-eye Slam Bradley. Donenfeld decided to take the risk. In June 1938 he published the first Superman strip as the flagship feature of his new imprint Action Comics. Sure enough, "Superman" took off like a rocket--or a bird, a plane....

The Golem and Superman

"The Golem was very much the precursor of the super-hero in that in every society there's a need for mythological characters, wish fulfillment. And the wish fulfillment in the Jewish case of the hero would be someone who could protect us. This kind of storytelling seems to dominate in Jewish culture."
--Will Eisner

Conceived by Siegel and Shuster while they were still in high school, Superman became the first comic-book character to cross over to virtually every medium--novels (George Lowther's The Adventures of Superman, illustrated by Joe Shuster and published in 1942, featured the first comic-book hero to appear in a novel), radio plays, television programs (including the current WB hit drama Smallville, a postmodern look at Superman's early life in quintessential small-town America), theater (Harold Prince's 1966 Broadway musical It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman), feature films, movie serials, animated short subjects, newspaper comic strips, Internet comics, even popular music (in the rapper Eminem's 2002 song entitled "Superman," he compares himself to the Man of Steel).

The idea of Superman occurred to Jerry Siegel one hot summer night in 1933. The teenager had trouble falling asleep. While lying in bed, he thought, "if only I could fly..." and began to envision a character who could fly--a character who was stronger, more courageous, more invincible than he could ever be. Excited, Jerry hurried to his desk and wrote out in comic strip form the first Superman story; then early the next morning he rushed over to the home of his artist friend Joe Shuster to share his idea. Equally inspired, Joe immediately began to draw a prototype of the character. Thus was a hero born.

Superman actualized the adolescent power fantasies of its creators--two Jewish Depression kids craving a muscle-bound redeemer to liberate them from the social and economic impoverishment of their lives. And, as Michael Chabon (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, about two Siegel and Shuster-style cartoonists) notes, there's a parallel between Kavalier and Clay's superhero creations and the Golem--the legendary creature magically conceived by the rabbi of medieval Prague to defend the community from an invasion by its antisemitic enemies. Cartoonist, writer, and comic-book historian Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit) also views Superman as a mythic descendant of the Golem and thus a link in the chain of Jewish tradition. "[Jews needed] a hero who could protect us against an almost invincible force," Eisner says. "So [Siegel and Shuster] created an invincible hero."

The Superman narrative is also rich in Jewish symbolism. He is a child survivor named Kal-El (in Hebrew, "All that is God") from the planet Krypton, whose population, a race of brilliant scientists, is decimated. His parents send him to Earth in a tiny rocket ship, reminiscent of how baby Moses survived Pharaoh's decree to kill all Jewish newborn sons. In the context of the 1930s, the story also reflects the saga of theKindertransports--the evacuation to safety of hundreds of Jewish children, without their parents, from Austria, Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain.

Angst-ridden adolescent fans, Jewish and not, shared Siegel and Shuster's feelings of helplessness and yearned for a super-savior--a fact that was not lost on the comic-book publishers, who responded with a succession of new superhero creations, among them Wonder Man (created in May 1939 by Will Eisner) and Captain Marvel (created in February 1940 by writer Otto Binder and artist C. C. Beck). In the pre-Superman era, brash, hard-boiled detectives (Ace King, Detective Dan, the aforementioned Slam Bradley) and humorous slapstick features (Curly and the Kids, Sheldon Mayer's "Scribbly") had dominated the genre. After Superman, notes former Marvel Comics publisher and Spider Man co-creator Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber), "if artists wanted to be successful, they thought, 'I guess we better give our characters costumes and double identities.'" Thus, for example, Batman secretly doubled as rich playboy Bruce Wayne, The Flash as police scientist Jay Garrick, The Ray as reporter Happy Terrill, Wonder Woman as U.S. army major Diana Prince, and Captain America as police officer Steve Rogers.

Instinct for Storytelling

"I am a fan of anybody who can make a living in his underwear."
--David Mamet, reflecting on Superman

In 1939, in the wake of the tremendous success of Siegel and Shuster's Superman, Max Gaines joined forces with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz in a new publishing venture called All-American Comics (the AA Group). The new group would expand the DC universe of characters with titles such as Flash Comics and All-American Comics--featuring, among others, the adventures of Hawkman, aka millionaire antiques collector (and reincarnated Egyptian prince) Carter Hall; and Green Lantern, secretly radio announcer Alan Scott (aided by a magic ring).

Other comic-book companies, like Timely Comics, Archie Comics, Whiz Comics, and Quality Comics, were now competing with the AA Group, hiring a great many Jewish artists, writers, and editors to create the next big superhero hit. Publishers who could not afford in-house staffs contracted with the Eisner-Iger Studio, founded in 1937 by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, which "packaged" comics--in other words, maintained a crew of artists who would write, draw, letter, color, edit, and design comic-book stories. In so doing, Eisner and Iger helped launch the careers of future X-Men and Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg), Batman co-creator Bob Kane (Bob Kahn), and Al Jaffee and Dave Berg of MAD magazine fame.

Jewish illustrators and writers entered the comic-book field because other areas of commercial illustration were virtually closed to them. "We couldn't get into newspaper strips or advertising; ad agencies wouldn't hire a Jew," explains Al Jaffee. "One of the reasons we Jews drifted into the comic-book business is that most of the comic-book publishers were Jewish. So there was no discrimination there."

"Also," adds Will Eisner, "this business was brand new. It was the bottom of the social ladder, and it was wide open to anybody. Consequently, the Jewish boys who were trying to get into the field of illustration found it very easy to come aboard." For talented Jewish kids who had no gift for athletics (like, say, heavyweight boxer Max Baer), music (like Benny Goodman), or acting (like John Garfield and the Marx Brothers), creating comic books appeared to be a way out of poverty and into a legitimate, hopefully lucrative, artistic career. For the same reason, the field was also wide open for comics publishers--most of them marketing mavens who began with a few investment dollars in their pockets. And it was a perfect fit, given the centrality of storytelling in Jewish culture. "We are people of the Book; we are storytellers essentially," says Eisner, "and anyone who's exposed to Jewish culture, I think, walks away for the rest of his life with an instinct for telling stories."

The Golden Age?

"I have no idea when the Golden Age was [supposed to have been], but as far as I'm concerned, wherever I am is the Golden Age!"
--Stan Lee

The period roughly from 1933 to 1955 is regarded by comics historians as the "Golden Age" because it was the "first wave" of new talent, an era when classic comic-book characters such as Superman, Batman, and Captain America were created, as was the graphic language of contemporary comics. "Today you call it the Golden Age," laughs Eisner. "Well, for those of us that were in the Golden Age, we didn't know it. It was the Leaden Age as far as we were concerned!" Indeed, most of the comic-book artists and writers of this era never emerged from poverty. They were underpaid wage slaves with no rights or royalties; the characters they created were owned and trademarked by the comic-book publishers. Even Siegel and Shuster, creators of the world's first comic-book superhero, were bilked, earning a paltry $130 from Harry Donenfeld for the first thirteen-page Superman story and having to negotiate for meager financial and creative participation in subsequent Superman strips and spin-offs (all Superman licensing fees were paid to Donenfeld's corporation, "Superman, Inc.").

The turning point for Superman's creators came in 1978--exactly forty years after Superman's first release. During a TV talk-show promotion of the first Superman movie, an elderly gentleman rose from the audience and said in a soft voice: "My name is Jerry Siegel. I co-created the character Superman on which they're making this movie, and I work at a supermarket bagging groceries." The studio audience gasped. So did Jerry Robinson (a cartoonist, comic-book historian, and at that time the head of the National Cartoonists Society), who was watching the show from home.

Robinson decided to launch a campaign aimed at Warner Brothers, which, as the parent company of DC Comics, owned the Superman copyright. He wanted the media giant to compensate Siegel and Shuster for having created one of the most widely recognized characters on earth. It would take many players, hundreds of arts organizations, and considerable legal maneuvering before the studio bowed to the pressure. The inventors of Superman received a "created by" credit in the movie, and an annual stipend which continued for the rest of their lives. Today, when a movie or TV series (not to mention comic book) is released featuring Superman, it bears the credit line: "Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster," ensuring that future generations will know the genesis of the Man of Steel.

Batman & The Joker

"Bill Finger co-created the character of Batman. He was there from day one!"
--Jerry Robinson

In 1939 comic-book artist Bob Kane bid farewell to his short-lived stint at the Eisner-Iger Studio to create adventure features for DC Comics. DC wanted a follow-up character to their golden boy, Superman, and Harry Donenfeld offered Kane eight instead of five dollars a page. Recalls Eisner: "I said to Bob, 'You can't do adventure, you can't draw that well!' And Bob said, 'No, I can do it, and I got a guy who can write it!' That guy was Bill Finger, a Jew from Denver, Colorado."

Kane and Finger got together and brainstormed the new character DC wanted. Kane suggested a pair of bat-style wings, which he'd doodled in sketchbooks for years. Finger proposed the wings be turned into a more practical, yet uniquely scalloped cape, then added a triangular motif to the costume, including triangular "fins" protruding from Batman's gloves, and pointy bat ears. In formulating the basic story line, the two drew upon favorite films (such as The Bat Whispers, in which a detective prowls the night as a killer wearing an ungainly bat-mask); novels (such as Johnston McCulley's All-Story Weekly, in which the rich playboy Zorro becomes an avenger by night, and the various books featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who utilized deductive reasoning to solve crimes); and radio programs (such as The Shadow, in which wealthy playboy Lamont Cranston used his mastery of disguise to strike fear in the hearts of criminals). It was Finger who invented the "Dark Knight's" origin story (in which a young Bruce Wayne's parents are killed by a criminal, leaving the child obsessed with fighting crime), and the menacing urban setting of Gotham City. "[Finger] was the best writer in comic books," asserts former Batman ghost artist Jerry Robinson (the newspaper stripLife With Robinson). Yet despite Batman's success--second only to Superman in DC's rapidly expanding superhero pantheon--Finger died impoverished, never recognized for his role in creating Batman. "Bob Kane had made a deal with DC that he [Kane] would write and draw Batman," Robinson explains, "so he kept Bill's involvement quiet." In addition, Kane made extensive use of uncredited "assistants," or ghost artists, such as Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff, and Dick Sprang, all of whom were Jewish, and would sign Bob Kane's name to their work. "I think I signed Bob Kane's name more than he did," Robinson notes.

Robinson also takes credit for having created, in 1940, the most famous super-villian in comic-book history--the clown prince of crime known as the Joker--for which Kane took official credit. "Kane stated for years that he created the Joker and that he based him on the Conrad Veidt film The Man Who Laughs," Robinson says. "But the true story is that I'd created the Joker based an autobiographical incident. Everyone in my family was a championship bridge player, and so we always had decks of cards lying around the house. At the time I had a creative writing assignment due at Columbia University, where I was studying when I wasn't working on Batman. I figured I'd write a story about a villain, but I liked humor, I liked comedy. So I thought, I'll combine the two, and make a murderer who looks like the Joker in a deck of cards. I brought it in and showed it to Bob Kane and Bill Finger. And the first design for the Joker that I drew looks just like the one in the deck of cards in my bedroom."

Nailing the Nazis

"I found a way to help the war effort by portraying the times in the form of comic characters. I was saying what was on my mind, and I was extremely patriotic!"
--Jack Kirby

With America's entry into World War II, Superman, Batman, and other comic-book superheroes were pressed into action. "As comics writers," Stan Lee says, "we had to have villains in our stories. And once World War II started, the Nazis gave us the greatest villains in the world to fight against. It was a slam dunk." Captain Marvel fought Captain Nazi, the Aryan assassin and super-soldier. Captain America, created in 1941 by Jewish cartoonists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, took on the Nazi agent Red Skull. "Two Jews created this weak little guy named Steve Rogers who gets shot in the arm [by scientist Dr. Reinstein, a reference to Albert Einstein] and, by way of a 'secret serum,' becomes this super-strong hero who starts destroying Nazis," explains political cartoonist Peter Kuper (World War Three Illustrated, The New Yorker, MAD magazine's "Spy Vs. Spy"). "What a distinctly empowering image." Simon and Kirby also created the Boy Commandos, a strip about an international group of patriotic children from Allied countries who aided in the war effort; the stories' final panels often depicted caricatures of Hitler being foiled by the children's covert operations. The lesson: even children--like those who read comics--could play a heroic role in the battle against evil.

To demonstrate their patriotism, Jewish comics creators were careful to fashion superheroes they perceived as super American. The all-powerful Steve Rogers, for example, was blond and blue-eyed. "When you're sitting down to write about an American hero within an American culture, you begin to devise those characters or characteristics that you regard as gentile," Eisner explains.

By 1943 comic-book publishing had become a multimillion-dollar industry, with monthly sales reaching a record 25 million copies. The AA and DC groups claimed approximately one-third of the comic-book market, and second-tier companies, such as Quality and Timely, were showing solid profits as well. In another two years DC would absorb the AA Group and form a "DC Universe," making it possible for one DC hero, such as Green Lantern, to "guest-star" in Batman, another DC comic book, with a continuing and consistent story line.

All was going great--that is, until....

Cleaning Up the Comics

"The real question is this: Are comic books good, or are they not good? If you want to raise a generation that is half storm-troopers and half cannon-fodder with a dash of illiteracy, then comic books are good! In fact, they are perfect!"
--Dr. Frederick Wertham

"It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid...."
--William M. Gaines

Confronted with the growing popularity of comic books, in 1941 the General Federation of Women's Clubs and other organizations concerned with preserving "the innocence" of America's youth launched a campaign against the increasingly popular genre of "true crime" comics, which featured titles like "Boston's Bloody Gang War" and "Murder, Morphine and Me." Anticipating the coming storm, AA Group chief Max Gaines invited a number of prominent educators and psychologists to serve on his board of advisers. One of them, psychologist William Moulton Marston, invented a comic-book character he believed would set a positive example for America's children.

His creation, Wonder Woman--a crime-fighting, whimsical Amazon princess renowned for her highly ethical character--became the industry's first major female superhero. (Sheldon Mayer's Red Tornado, a feisty, female crimefighter not to be confused with the later, more popular male superhero of the same name, was the first ever female comic-book superhero, but never gained a large following.) Other female superheroes read by both boys and girls would follow--Black Canary, Liberty Belle, Phantom Lady.

After having served as midwife to the first comic book, the first superhero, the first superhero group, and the first major female crime-fighter, Gaines decided it was time to move the genre in a new direction--ethical education. His new imprint, Educational Comics (EC), published such didactic titles as Picture Stories From the Bible, Picture Stories from World History, and Picture Stories from Science. He issued strict guidelines to the EC creative staff--never show anyone being stabbed or shot; never show a scene of torture; never show a hypodermic needle; never show a coffin, especially with anyone in it--and he enlisted a group of rabbis, priests, and other clergy to consult on the Picture Stories series. Yet the ever cost-conscious publisher often rejected their scholarly advice. "I don't give a damn how long it took Moses," he once screamed. "I want it [the story] in two panels!"

In 1945 Gaines sold out his one-third stake in the AA Group to his partners Liebowitz and Donenfeld for a half-million dollars. He retained only a handful of EC titles: Tiny Tot Comics, Animal Fables, and the Picture Stories line. Working independently for the next two years, Gaines concentrated all his effort on the remaining titles, but EC consistently lost money. Gaines' comics may have been morally sound, but children preferred tales of superheroes fighting heinous villains.

On August 20, 1947, Gaines was boating on Lake Placid, New York when suddenly another vessel came speeding toward him. There was no way to avoid the impending crash. In a heroic last act, Gaines threw the child of his friend Sam Irwin into the back of the boat just seconds before the collision, saving the boy's life. Absorbing the full impact of the crash, Gaines died instantly.

Max's son, Bill Gaines, a 25-year-old NYU student, took charge of EC comics, at the urging of his mother. Trying to get the company out of the red, he issued a line of teen romance comics with sappy titles like Modern Love, A Moon, A Girl...Romance and Saddle Romances; they failed, miserably. Then, with the help of writer/artist/editor Al Feldstein, who shared Bill's passion for radio horror programs, Gaines dropped EC's line of detective comics (Crime Patrol, Against Crime) in favor of lurid science- fiction comic titles such as Weird Science and Weird Fantasy as well as horror comics such as The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear, which featured such gory tales as "Coffin Spell" and "Ooze in the Cellar." Educational Comics was renamed Entertaining Comics, and EC began making money. Writer/artist/editor Harvey Kurtzman joined the staff, creating two antiwar comics destined to become classics: Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. A strong advocate of social justice, Kurtzman refused to portray minorities as racist caricatures, a common practice at the time. In his Korean War tales, he sometimes told the story from the point of view of an enemy combatant, something that had never been done before in a comic book. "The comic-book companies tended to make war glamorous," Kurtzman said. "That offended me--so I turned my stories to antiwar."

What set EC apart from its competitors was a commitment to moral themes. Story lines often dealt with the evils of abusive relationships, misguided patriotism, and racism. In writer Al Feldstein's "Judgment Day" (from Weird Fantasy #18, March / April 1953), for example, an Earth astronaut named Tarlton is sent to the planet Cybrinia to judge whether its robot inhabitants are socially and technologically advanced enough to join the Earth's Galactic Republic. Determining that Cybrinia is a segregated society (the orange robots consign the blue robots to economic discrimination and ghettos), Tarlton decides that Cybrinia cannot be part of the Republic until its people, like those on Earth, have learned to live together without discrimination. When Tarlton returns to his space-ship, he removes his helmet, and we see that he is a handsome Black man, "...the beads of perspiration on his dark skin twinkling like distant stars...." This O. Henry-style twist ending, typical of EC's horror and sci-fi stories, presaged the morality tales of later TV shows such as Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Star Trek.

Gaines' successful turnaround of his father's failing company led to scores of imitators that produced horror, crime, and science-fiction comics with no redeeming social qualities. Alarmed parents who vehemently objected to the "filth" their children were reading found an ally in psychologist Dr. Frederic Wertham, author of The Seduction of the Innocent, a study on the negative effects of comic books. Wertham condemned most of the genre--especially crime and horror comics--for contributing to juvenile delinquency and cited dozens of cases of children who had committed murders, injuries, and suicides after reading comics. He also portrayed Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman as closeted gay and lesbian superheroes, a damning accusation in those deeply homophobic times, and ironic, given the fact that Wonder Woman had been created as a positive role model by a fellow psychologist.

Much of the slander directed against Gaines and his fellow comic-book publishers was motivated by antisemitism. A Hartford Courant editorial, for instance, referred to comics as "the filthy stream that flows from the gold-plated sewers of New York"--a code phrase for "Jewish businesses." Comic-book burnings became a familiar sight across the country, and some of the so-called "disgusting" literature was seized by police. The attorney general of Massachusetts called for the banning of Gaines' humor comic Panicafter it ran a spoof of "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (commonly known by its opening line, "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"), charging that it was actually stirring up a bona fidepanic by "desecrating Christmas." New York police seized and quarantined issues ofPanic until Gaines went to court and won their release.

As the outcry following the publication of Seduction of the Innocent grew, so did the call for government intervention. On April 21, 1954, the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary opened in Manhattan federal court. Gaines was the only comic-book publisher willing to testify, but due to the effects of a strong cold medicine, his performance on the witness stand was less than stellar. The more Senator Estes Kefauver and his committee grilled the groggy Gaines, the more his speech slurred. "The media jumped on that," says MAD cartoonist Drew Friedman of the televised hearings. "It was so unfair. They portrayed him as some slovenly Jewish pornographer."

Reeling from this debacle, Gaines called an emergency meeting of his fellow comic-book publishers, who agreed with him that immediate action was necessary--but instead of fighting back, they decided to form a self-censoring comics authority. They also voted to ban the words "crime, horror, terror, and weird" from comic books, effectively casting EC as the scapegoat for the entire industry. As most of Gaines' titles contained at least one of these words, he had no choice but to suspend publication of his horror and suspense comics.

Established on September 16, 1954, the Comics Code Authority, headed by former judge Charles F. Murphy, transformed the genre. Ninety percent of the industry adopted the CCA's code, which prohibited the depiction of vampires, zombies, werewolves, and ghouls. Policemen, government employees, and other authority figures had to be portrayed in a respectful manner; evil characters could be depicted only for the purpose of illuminating a moral issue; and all "lurid, unsavory, and gruesome" illustrations were disallowed. To be sold on newsstands or in drugstores, comic books had to carry the "Approved" Comics Code Authority seal.

Kurtzman's MAD World

"I don't think it's going too far to say that for my generation, the generation that protested the Vietnam War, growing up with Harvey's MAD and Harvey's war comics shaped the situation to allow our generation to protest that war. It was comics about media that made you question how you get your information, and that's a necessary component toward taking any kind of political action."
--Art Spiegelman

By 1955 the only EC publication still in print was MAD, which had dodged the axe through a clever maneuver--Gaines had transformed the comic book into a magazine (issue #24, 25 cents), exempting it from CCA regulations.

MAD had been created as a comic book three years earlier by the socially crusading Harvey Kurtzman, who'd written, edited, and helped illustrate the first several issues. Subtitled "Humor in a Jugular Vein" and designed to appeal to both teens and adults, it was the first satirical comic book to address the nation's social ills and challenge its sacred cows. In 1954, for example, MAD #17 attacked Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's televised hearings on Communist infiltration of the U.S. Army with "What's My Shine?," a parody of the TV game show What's My Line?, which had been preempted by the hearings; Kurtzman was deriding the hearings as having as much validity as a Hollywood game show. MAD also gave a wink to Jewish readers with the constant use of Yiddishisms, such as "fershlugginer," "schmaltz," "oy," and "feh" --Kurtzman's way of tossing matzah balls at the white-bread WASPy veneer of his competitors' comics. Explains Al Jaffee: "MAD made fun of pretentiousness; they made fun of the nobleman. Because none of them were noblemen. It's basic irreverence."

MAD's conversion from a comic book to a bimonthly magazine marked the end the Golden Age of comic books, which, for its creators, was like a drama in two acts. In act one, Jews seeking to escape poverty invented a new genre that melded popular art and storytelling, and projected Jewish (and adolescent) power fantasies onto their "all-American" superhero creations. During the shorter second act, the five-year reign of EC Comics was marked by an overriding concern about morality, sometimes emanating from a Jewish sensibility. In the words of The X-Men creator Stan Lee: "To me you can wrap all of Judaism up in one sentence, and that is, 'Do not do unto others...' All I tried to do in my stories was show that there's some innate goodness in the human condition. And there's always going to be evil; we should always be fighting evil."

HOW JEWS TRANSFORMED THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY
Part II: The Silver Age (1956-1978)

by Arie Kaplan

y the mid-'50s, the comic book industry was in a sorry state. Allegations that the genre was promoting juvenile delinquency and illiteracy had "done in" the popular and groundbreaking horror and crime comics, and superheroes were now bland incarnations of their former selves. Batman, once a shadowy figure of the night, was recast as a high-camp boy scout battling rainbow-colored monsters. Superman, once the nemesis of corrupt politicians and foreign dictators, now embarked on such silly misadventures as keeping himself whole after being split in two (Superman Red and Superman Blue). And Wonder Woman, once a model of female empowerment, now required an escort--her boyfriend Colonel Steve Trevor--to satisfy critics the likes of Dr. Frederick Wertham, who'd suggested she was a closeted lesbian.

Desperate to revitalize sagging sales, DC began to revamp its second-string lineup of superheroes, such as Green Lantern (now test pilot Hal Jordan) and The Flash (aka police scientist Barry Allen). Editor Julius ("Julie") Schwartz, along with writer John Broome (not Jewish) and cartoonist Gil Kane (born Eli Katz), introduced hundreds of new, identically costumed Green Lantern superheroes, each from a different planet, who patrolled the galaxy as part of an interplanetary peacekeeping force. The Green Lantern of Earth, Hal Jordan, was modeled on actor Paul Newman, and the Guardians of the Universe, little blue men who served as masters of the Green Lantern Corps, were designed by Kane to resemble Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion! Schwartz and his creative team also conceived a makeover for The Flash--a more modern crew cut and a sleeker costume--and Jewish writer Bob Kanigher cranked out more complex stories emphasizing The Flash's character development. Inaugurated in September-October 1956 in the pages of Showcase #4, the new Flash would herald the so-called "Silver Age" of comics: the first age in which comics weren't just for kids anymore.

But although these updated superheroes boosted sales for DC, the malaise gripping the industry persisted. Comic books needed a good punch in the jaw...and they were about to get it!

The Marvel Age

"When you think about it, The Incredible Hulk is a Golem."
--Stan Lee, referring to the medieval monster of Jewish lore

In 1961, Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber) was facing a career crisis. After twenty-one years in the business, the comic book writer, editor, and production manager at the Goodman Publishing Company was tired of being perceived as being at "the bottom of the cultural totem pole." He aspired to be "a great writer, someday." It was time, Lee decided, to consider a career change.

But before he made his move, his boss Martin Goodman called Lee into his office and ordered him to come up with a new superhero concept that would outperform DC's The Justice League of America (which combined the revamped Flash and Green Lantern with mainstays like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to form a team of superheroes). Lee was incredulous. Sales of Superman, the gold standard of superheroes, had slumped for much of the 1950s. It would take a real-life superhero to truly revive the genre.

Lee consulted his wife, Joan, who advised him to take up Goodman's challenge. "Why not do comics the way you've always wanted to do them?" Lee remembers her saying. "After all, you're going to quit anyway."

Lee heeded her advice, and what happened next may have saved the comic book industry from extinction. In November 1961, he and Jewish artist/co-creator Jack Kirby unveiled Fantastic Four #1, a crime-fighting series with four heroes who exhibited complex human emotions and often fought with each other, a rarity in the usually chipper, ultra-friendly superhero world. Readers could empathize with such characters as Benjamin Grimm (who'd been transformed by cosmic rays into a monstrous pile of orange rocks) despite--or perhaps because of--their flaws. To his fellow superheroes, Ben could be a hotheaded jerk, but comics fans attributed Ben's bad temper to his being trapped in repulsive orange skin and empathized with him when he was rejected by the attractive Sue (the FF superhero who could turn invisible). Like many Marvel characters, the emotionally challenged Ben became a metaphor for Jews and other minority outsiders who faced discrimination because of their skin color or ethnic roots.

The Fantastic Four quickly built up a large readership, and Marvel Comics (as the Goodman line was renamed in 1963) soon introduced titles featuring physically challenged heroes, such as Daredevil (aka blind lawyer Matt Murdock) and Thor (aka crippled Doctor Don Blake). And thus began the Marvel Age of Comics, a subsection of the Silver Age that was marked by Lee and Kirby's brilliant nine-year collaboration. One of their early hits, The Incredible Hulk--a conflicted hero who could not control the rage swirling inside of him--had a metaphorical affinity to the legendary Golem of Prague, a monster who was both a powerful protector and a potential danger to everyone in his path.

Courting the College Crowd

"I just thought, what if somebody from another planet who was a good guy came down here and saw the terrible things we're doing to our world and to each other?"
--Stan Lee, discussing the Silver Surfer

Stan Lee was no longer thinking about leaving the comics world. He was too busy thinking up new superheroes--like Spider-Man.

Co-created by artist Steve Ditko, Spider-Man was the alter ego of teen science-geek Peter Parker, who'd been bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly found himself endowed with super-strength, agility, and the ability to scale Manhattan skyscrapers. Spider-Man was an instant hit; teenagers identified with this first-ever major teenage superhero, who pledged to use his powers for the betterment of humankind. Before Peter Parker had started wall-crawling, the only teens in comic books were comedic characters, like Archie Andrews of Archie Comics fame, or sidekicks, like Batman's Robin.

The popularity of Marvel Comics among high school and college students gave Lee and Kirby the freedom to delve into more sophisticated philosophical, spiritual, and moral themes. In Fantastic Four #48 (1966), for example, they introduced Galactus, an energy-imbibing alien giant who devours whole planets for sustenance, accompanied by his herald, the Silver Surfer, who scouts planets for his master to consume. The Silver Surfer selects Earth as his master's next meal, but after spending time here, he feels sympathy for Earthlings, whom he believes have the potential to act righteously, despite the many injustices they commit. Deciding to stay on Earth and help the Earthlings (a choice which relinquishes his freedom to roam the galaxy), he begs his master to look elsewhere. "I wanted to tell a story with a biblical subtext that was part spiritual fable and part ecological morality tale," Lee says. "I wanted Silver Surfer to convey that we live in the Garden of Eden, on the most perfect planet possible, yet people are so blind, they don't realize it. Instead of enjoying it, we spend our time hating people who are different than we are, being greedy and avaricious, and committing crimes. I wondered, what if somebody from another planet came down and saw the human race--what would he think? What would he feel about us? And that's what I tried to do with the Silver Surfer."

Silver Surfer's debut in the '60s could not have been more timely. He quickly became an ecology icon among the youth of America's burgeoning counterculture, and Marvel's sales soared.

Mutants and Metaphors

"Everything in comics, as in myths, is a hyperbolic metaphor."
--Jon Bogdanove

The next major breakthrough for Marvel came in September 1963, when Lee and Kirby introduced The X-Men--a superhero team of five men and women born with an extra "mutant" gene that endowed each with a different superpower (telepathy, super-strength, flight, and the ability to emit deadly optic blasts). From their base at Professor Charles Xavier's "School for Gifted Youngsters" in New York's Westchester County, the five set out to fight injustice. The X-Men was a hit among '60s college students, who may have seen in pacifist Professor X's battle against the militant mutant Magneto a metaphor for the divergent ideologies of the nonviolent Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the militant Malcolm X. Whether in the minds of its Jewish creators The X-Men symbolized civil rights or, for that matter, the Jew as outsider is a matter of debate. But in the decade to come, after Stan Lee had left X-Men storytelling to others, one of the new Marvel staff writers would make the Jewish connection unmistakable.

Openly Jewish, Openly Heroic

"At its foundation, The X-Men had to be a story of hope."
--writer Chris Claremont

By 1975, sales of The X-Men were falling fast. It was time, Marvel execs decided, to revitalize the series. Jewish comics writer Chris Claremont was picked for the job.

Claremont decided to rewrite the backstory of The X-Men's saga. "I was trying to figure out what made Magneto tick," says Claremont. "And I thought, what was the most transfiguring event of our century that would tie in the super-concept of The X-Men as persecuted outcasts? It has to be the Holocaust!" Claremont--who'd once lived for two months on a kibbutz in Israel, where he had met Holocaust survivors--eventually cast Magneto as a Holocaust survivor embittered by humanity's silence in the face of Nazi barbarity. He now had a complex villain with a motive. "And once I found that point of departure for Magneto," Claremont says, "all the rest fell into place, because it allowed me to turn him into a tragic figure who wants to save his people. Magneto was defined by all that had happened to him. So I could start from the premise that he was a good and decent man at heart. I then had the opportunity, over the course of 200 issues, to attempt to redeem him, to see if he could start over, if he could evolve in the way that Menachem Begin had evolved from a guy that the British considered 'Shoot on sight' in 1945--you know, 'you see him, you kill him! Don't bother about a trial'--to a statesman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976."

Claremont also brought new strong female characters into the series. In Uncanny X-Men#129 (1979) he introduced Katherine "Kitty" Pryde, a young Jewish girl who possessed the mutant ability to walk through walls. Kitty, he says, was modeled after an Israeli teenager wearing a miniskirt and carrying an Uzi whom he'd seen one day while walking down a street in Tel Aviv. An immigrant from England, Claremont understood "what it's like to be different, and what it's like to be Jewish. So that became my window through which I could present The X-Men universe to a broader audience."

Kirby's Fourth World

"When I first saw Darth Vader, I thought, 'Oh, it's Doctor Doom!'"
--Mark (Luke Skywalker) Hamill

In 1970, Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzburg) shocked the comic book industry when he defected from Marvel and rejoined rival publisher DC. Simply put, he had felt unappreciated and unacknowledged for the many Marvel characters he'd helped to create.

It was at DC, where he served as editor, writer, and penciller of his own line, that Kirby would imagine the Fourth World, an interlocking series of four monthly comic book titles--The New Gods, The Forever People, Mister Miracle, and for a time Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. The series featured typical comic book fare of the period--alien worlds, super-powered warriors, genetic experimentation--but much of its inspiration derived from a melding of classic Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology and contemporary history. InMister Miracle #1 (March-April 1971), for example, Kirby introduced his escape-artist protagonist Scott Free, who as an infant was sent by his father, noble Highfather of the peaceful planet New Genesis, to the warlike planet Apokolips to be trained as a warrior. In exchange, Darkseid, the evil lord of Apokolips, sent his newborn son Orion to New Genesis to be trained as a peacemaker. The trade was supposed to seal a cease-fire agreement between the two planets, but because of Darkseid's treachery, the war only intensified.

The Fourth World, says Jewish writer/ cartoonist Jon Bogdanove (Alpha Flight, Power Pack), is, in part, Jack Kirby's commentary on the Holocaust. "You have a 'fuhrer'character, whose name is Darkseid [pronounced Darkside], but the 'seid' is spelled like a German word. And then there's the image of sooty Apokolips, with its open fire pits, which is evocative of the industrialized war machine of Nazi Germany. Armagetto (the slums of Apokolips whose wretchedly impoverished denizens were known as 'Hunger Dogs') was really about the ghettos in Poland and elsewhere. All these people who slave and die for Darkseid are subjected to dispiriting slogans, like 'Work Is Life, Death Is Freedom,' a clear allusion to the Nazi's 'Work Will Make You Free.' I think Kirby's experience as an American Jew fighting in World War II was particularly intense. It's not that Jack was in any way writing 'code' for his Jewish readers. He was just processing what was in his heart and head."

Comparisons have been drawn between Kirby's creations and some of America's most critically acclaimed and financially successful science-fiction movies, such as George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. "I'd be enormously surprised if George Lucas didn't read the Fourth World series," Bogdanove says. Both stories feature a character (Highfather in the Fourth World, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) who won't tell the hero the truth about his father. Star Wars has the Force; the Fourth World has the Source. Star Wars refers to the "dark side" of the Force; the Fourth World includes the character literally named "Darkseid." The Star Wars character Darth Vader also bears a striking resemblance to Kirby's Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom, clad in cloak, prosthetic armor, and iron mask. A more current film series influenced by Kirby's oeuvre is the Matrix trilogy, in which the protagonist Neo journeys to the peaceful city of Zion (safe haven from tyrannical machines which have overtaken the world), much like the peaceful city of Supertown (safe haven from the tyrannical Darkseid) in the Fourth World's Forever People title. And as the New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell recently wrote in an article discussing Kirby, Zion also bears a distinct resemblance to the Negative Zone, a "Netherworld" seen in the Fantastic Four. As Mitchell explains, "When Neo travels from the outer world of the Matrix to Zion, the world-within-worlds scenarios [like the Negative Zone] that Kirby pioneered in comics are visible."

Meanwhile, in the Underground...

"You won't find women depicted either as fabulously attired avenging Amazonian goddesses or scantily clad silicone-injected damsels in distress. For that matter, you won't find men portrayed as heroic, hormonally imbalanced saviours, evil masterminds or rabid, sex-crazed perverts."
--Diane Noomin, in the foreword to her underground cartoonists anthology
TwistedSisters Volume 2: Drawing The Line (1995)

While superhero comics were undergoing a revolution in character development--the happy, friendly characters of the Golden Age having been replaced with conflicted, dark ones--the burgeoning hippie counterculture was producing a new genre of comic books. Starting in 1962, countercultural or alternative newspapers such as Yarrowstalks and theChicago Mirror began to showcase their own underground comic strips. These often sexually charged, sometimes drug-fueled, always edgy works featured the lives of young, anti-establishment types. If superheroes showed up at all, they were parodies.

The new generation of underground comics creators--most of whom had grown up devouring Harvey Kurtzman's MAD and Will Eisner's The Spirit--took root in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, where Diane Noomin and Trina Robbins, among others, drew cartoons for newspapers like the Berkeley Barb and the San Francisco Oracle; and in New York City, where newspapers like the East Village Other and The Realist featured the works of Jewish cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Sam Gross. The comic strips soon evolved into underground comic books ("comix"), published by such alternative presses as Ron Turner's Last Gasp, Denis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press, and Don Donahue's Apex Novelties. Given the books' "adult" content and graphics, they were sold in "head shops" alongside psychedelic posters and drug paraphernalia.

The alternative comix world also pioneered the rise of female comic book writers and artists. In 1970, Last Gasp's It Ain't Me, Babe became the first comic book to be published with an all-female editorial and creative staff. One of its popular strips was written by a Jewish woman--Diane Noomin--about DiDi Glitz, a character who parodied the postmodern Jewish American Princess stereotype. Aline Kominsky, the future wife of legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb, soon followed with her own autobiographical underground comic strip, "Love That Bunch," in which she detailed her adventures as a self-proclaimed sex-crazed Jewish neurotic. Trina Robbins, daughter of a Yiddish newspaper journalist, moved the Jewish women's experience into political terrain with her commemoration of the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, presenting it in comic book form in Lilith, the Jewish feminist magazine.

Another comix innovation of the early '70s was the publication of Art Spiegelman's three-page version of "Maus," about his father's Holocaust experience--the villainous Germans depicted as cats and their Jewish victims as mice--in a 1972 edition of the alternative comic book Funny Aminals (misspelling intentional). Spiegelman would later expand "Maus" into a best-selling graphic novel, but at this stage of the 24-year-old's career he was busy editing his revolutionary underground comix magazine Arcade, which featured stories by fellow Jewish writers and cartoonists. In her trademark primitivist style, Diane Noomin created brutally confessional comic strips about her awkward childhood; through her "Blabette Yakowitz" comic strips, Aline Kominsky deftly lampooned the nosy, matronly "yentas" she'd grown up with in suburban Long Island.

The Splendor of Being an Ordinary American

"Serious readers have never, for the most part, looked to comics for good literature because, in fact, there are so few good comics that are well-written."
--Harvey Pekar

By 1972, the underground comix market had gone into a tailspin, a victim of changing tastes and the precarious state of head shops, which everywhere faced closure by the authorities. Arcade would last a few more years, and publishers like Last Gasp several more decades, but the first wave of underground comix were history.

There were a few exceptions--and one of them was American Splendor, the self-published comic book series by Harvey Pekar, a homely Jewish file clerk in Cleveland who imagined that his "everyman" trials and tribulations might have a certain appeal. Impressed by the concept, Pekar's longtime friend, underground comix artist Robert Crumb, made an exception to his policy of drawing only his own work and illustrated many of Pekar's true-to-life tales (Pekar could draw only stick figures)--including when Harvey's wife-to-be announced on their first date that they should forget about the courtship and just get married. American Splendor would also feature such Jewish themes and characters as the Jewish rag peddlers of 1920s New York (delineated lovingly in the strip "Pa-ayper Reggs," illustrated by Crumb) and "Rabbi's Vife" (illustrated by Jewish cartoonist Drew Friedman), about an elderly Viennese Jewish doctor whose poor joke-telling skills so annoyed Pekar that he decided to taunt the physician. Prior to the release of the critically acclaimed 2003 film version (starring actor Paul Giamatti as Pekar as well as Pekar himself) American Splendor was known by only a select few: working-class readers, intellectuals sick of superheroes, and cultural critics. Nevertheless, Pekar's influence was far-reaching. His poignant portrayals of the kinds of people we encounter in our daily lives added a whole new dimension to the comic book as a medium of serious social criticism.

From Novel Graphics to Graphic Novels

"In the years since A Contract With God has been published, the book has been translated into six languages, including, appropriately, Yiddish--a language in which I can think but cannot read or write."
--Will Eisner

A milestone in the evolution of the comic book was reached in 1978 with the publication of the first graphic novel: Will Eisner's A Contract With God. The creator of The Spirit in the 1940s and 1950s had been rediscovered by the emergence in the 1970s of "comic book specialty stores" (also known as "direct market distribution") that sold only comic books and related merchandise, and comic book conventions nationwide. Thus did a new generation encounter Will Eisner, and they were clamoring for more.

Eisner's answer was a total departure from his earlier emphasis on superheroes. Ever since 1938, inspired by the woodcut novels of artist Lynd Ward, Eisner had toyed with the idea of developing a serious work in comics form. At that time, however, such an idea would have been derided by publishers, who considered comics "for children only." In the 1950s Eisner would begin sketching out ideas for a more serious comics work, but it wasn't until 1978, after mature underground comix had garnered critical respect, that he completed his "narrative that deal[t] with intimate themes." Utilizing a new, experimental storytelling medium which he dubbed "graphic novel," Eisner recounted, in vignettes, tenement life in the Bronx of his youth. In the title story, "A Contract With God," protagonist Frimme Hersh, a pious Jewish man who had carved on a stone tablet a "contract with God," to which he attributes his lifelong lucky streak (he had been told early on in life that "God will reward you" for acts of kindness), is furious at God for allowing his young daughter Rachele to die of a sudden illness. Accusing God of "violat[ing] our contract!" Frimme disavows the contract and, with it, his faith. A now hardened and miserly Frimme seals his own fate.

A Contract with God offered readers a rich meditation on the eternal question posed in the Book of Job--"Why do bad things happen to good people?"--and the comics press responded with glowing reviews. The media soon picked up on the term "graphic novel" to describe novel-length works of "sequential art" (Eisner's alternate term for comics), and in the years to come other cartoonists wishing to create mature works would try their hands at this new form (Jason Lutes's Jar of Fools, Joe Kubert's Fax From Sarajevo,and Art Speigelman's MAUS).

If the comics industry of the 1950s ended with a hiccup, the '60s began with a roar, as the powerhouse Jewish writer/ artist team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revolutionized the industry by creating more complex, dark, and conflicted heroes--and thus widened the comics market from "kids only" to readers of all ages. The late '60s and early '70s saw the rise and fall of an underground comix revolution spawned in large part by Jews who brushed aside the metaphorical masks of their predecessors and portrayed openly Jewish characters. And by the decade's close, Will Eisner had taken the comic book to a new level with the invention of the graphic novel.

Thus ended the Silver Age of comics. The stage was now set for the next new development: the independent comics boom.

KINGS OF COMICS:
HOW JEWS TRANSFORMED THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY
Part III: The Bronze Age (1979 - )

by Arie Kaplan

ver since the late 1970s, comics have turned more introspective and artistically ambitious. As in the Golden and Silver Ages, Jewish comics creators have been at the cutting edge, producing works that probe Jewish history, showcase Jewish characters, and comment on spiritual and social issues. These artists have ushered in what may be termed "the Bronze Age" of comics--not because it's less esteemed than the Golden or Silver Ages, but because it is free of rose-colored gloss and glitter, and reflects the realities of the world in which we live.

From Comix to Graphics

"What I wanted to make was something I'd thought about as a result of reading '60s fanzines...the Great American Novel, but in comics form."
--Art Spiegelman, on the inspiration for Maus

By the late '70s, underground comics were history, and superhero titles once again dominated the genre. Frustrated by the lack of outlets for political graphics and comics, cartoonists Peter Kuper and Seth Tobocman introduced World War 3 Illustrated (1979), a self-published magazine committed to the pursuit of social justice through comics. "My parents had marched against the Vietnam War in the early '60s," says Kuper, "so for me as a cartoonist, social commentary was a natural transition." Along with newer comic book companies like Fantagraphics Books, First Comics, Pacific Comics, and Dark Horse Publishing, World War 3 Illustrated formed the vanguard of what would come to be known as "independent comics" or the "alternative comics press." Dozens of independent publishers sprang up, some debuting works by neophytes such as Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus; others featuring the work of established Jewish comics pros like Jack Kirby--who in 1981, for the first time in his career, could create a character, Captain Victory (published by Pacific Comics), that was his alone, and not the property of Marvel or DC.

In 1980, Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly would take the comics magazine genre to a new height. Their brainchild, RAW, a self-described "graphix" magazine (the label "comix" was then associated with drugs and sex), sought to blur the distinction between comics and fine art. In one issue, readers were instructed to peel away an acetate layer of line art on the cover to uncover layers of color underneath; and on another now highly collectible issue subtitled "The Torn Again Graphix Magazine," the top right corner of every cover was torn off by hand and clipped to the page, so that each copy would be unique, in essence an original work of art. Adding to the magazine's "high art" image was the inclusion of works by several European cartoonists (Joost Swarte of the Netherlands and Jacques Tardi of France) as well as edgy artwork from political cartoonist Sue Coe, retro stylist Charles Burns, and "King of Punk Art" painter Gary Panter. Established underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb still made the occasional appearance, but the spotlight was on newer talent, including Jewish artists Drew Friedman, Ben Katchor, and Mark Newgarden. Typical of RAW's sharp-edged social criticism was Friedman's parody of "The Andy Griffith Show," which depicted how an African American motorist might have been treated had he driven through a real southern town in the 1950s, not the gentle, sanitized "Mayberry" depicted on TV.

RAW was an instant success. The initial print run of 5,000 copies sold out, and sales ballooned to 35,000 copies by 1987 with issue #8--an impressive record for a small-press magazine with virtually no advertising or PR budget, relying solely on word of mouth to boost sales. Well received in art and graphics circles, RAW took non-mainstream comics to a new level of artistic respectability. Eschewing the overwhelmingly political bent of World War 3 Illustrated, RAW championed personal artistic expression and inspired the creation of several critically respected comics anthology magazines, including Monte Beauchamp's Blab! and Dark Horse's Cheval Noir.

Perhaps Spiegelman's greatest achievement in RAW was publishing his refined and reworked version of "Maus," first conceived as a three-page comic strip and printed in a 1972 issue of the underground comic book Funny Aminals (misspelling intentional). Spiegelman utilized the cartooning convention of anthropomorphized animals--mice symbolizing Jews, pigs as Poles, dogs as Americans, and cats as Nazis--in telling the story of his father's Holocaust experience. "In doing that three-page strip," Spiegelman recalls, "I realized that I had a lot of unfinished business. There was much more here that I could tap into." So, starting in 1978, Spiegelman began interviewing his father Vladek, and, over the next three years, he had collected enough material to write and illustrate the story of his father's survival and its impact on his own psyche.

Working on "Maus" became a way for Spiegelman to confront his own demons. "I was interested to learn [from studies of survivors' children] that some of these children put themselves in extreme situations, like mental hospitals, to experience what their parents went through," he explained in a 1987 Reform Judaism magazine interview. "I was hospitalized in 1968, and even at the time I was aware of moving through my incarceration in ways that I felt echoed my father's experiences. It was safer to be in a state mental hospital than at Auschwitz, but nevertheless I mimicked him, collecting scraps of string, for instance, in case they would come in handy later. Drawing 'Maus' is a far more effective way of recapitulating what I need to recapitulate in order to understand my situation." And "at a certain point," Spiegelman recalls, "I went to see a therapist who had been a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz. He helped me get past some [mental] blocks into [proceeding with] the volume."

After serializing "Maus, Volume I" in RAW, Spiegelman began looking for a publisher, a several-year quest that led to dozens of rejection letters--until, finally, Pantheon made him an unusual offer: the publisher agreed to proceed only if the completed work came out that very year. It was a curious demand, Spiegelman thought, as he had only completed the first half of the book, and that portion had taken eight years. Then he learned that an article had appeared in The New York Times Book Review which, he says, "talked about this work in progress in comics form that was the important literary achievement of our age"--astonishing coverage given the fact that "the Times Book Review never covered works in progress and certainly never comics-related material." Spiegelman would have been happy waiting until he'd finished the whole saga and collected it into one big book, but then he heard about a certain animated movie that was already in development. "I was very upset to learn about what would become An American Tale, which I'm quite sure was inspired by 'Maus,'" Spiegelman says. "I didn't want to have my book come out after some giant Spielberg-produced, feature-length animation; I didn't want to be perceived as a twisted version of Spielberg's more delightful and innocent use of mice as Jews. And so I really wanted my book to come out before this film was finished. The only way to do it would be to publish part one immediately, rather than wait till I'd finished part two, which would have been years more. At first Pantheon said, 'Forget it,' but once requests for the book started coming in as a result of the Times Book Review piece, they said yes, and then quickly put it out."

Maus's success would forever change how the world of arts and letters viewed comic books. The serious novel-length adult comic book had been attempted with varying degrees of success ever since 1978, when Will Eisner had invented the genre with his graphic novel A Contract With God. However, these works had rarely made it into chain bookstores such as Barnes and Noble; nor had any been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, as had Maus in 1992, the year after part two was published. It was the coming of age of an art form, a fact noted in U.S. News and World Report: "Remember the comic books of your youth? They've grown up.... And that's not all. The comics are also winning more respect. Literary honors, respectful reviews, museum exhibits--and even academic attention."

Maus's success would secure for graphic novels a niche in bookstores nationwide. "Maus saved non-superhero comics," says legendary feminist cartoonist and comics historian Trina Robbins (GoGirl!, Wonder Woman). Adds veteran comic book writer/editor Paul Kupperberg (Checkmate, Doom Patrol): "Suddenly comics didn't have to be guys in superhero costumes. They could be about real people, or mice pretending to be real people. It opened up the genre." Maus demonstrated what underground cartoonists like Spiegelman, Diane Noomin, and Harvey Pekar had known for decades--that autobiographical comics about everyday people were not only an art form, but one which could strike a chord with the American public.

A Comic Approach to History

"I leaned on the suitcase and my pencil danced across the yellow, creased paper. At first, I thought of my cartoon heroes. Flash Gordon. Tarzan. Jungle Jim. The Phantom. Strong and powerful. They could beat the Nazis. They could take us from this awful place."
--from Yossel: April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert

Once graphic novels were proven a natural medium for exploring intimate, personal issues in a serious manner, Jewish comics creators increasingly utilized the format to explore Jewish history and identity. In 1986, Will Eisner published The Dreamer, a semi-autobiographical account of his early days in comics' Golden Age, peopled with characters based on his fellow cartoonists, among them Batman's creator Bob Kane ("Ken Corn"), Eisner's former partner Jerry Iger ("Jimmy Samson"), and "Billy Eyron" as Eisner himself. In his most recent graphic novel, Fagin the Jew (2003), Eisner tells the tale of Oliver Twist from the vantage point of Moses Fagin, the leader of a band of thieves in 19th-century England. "Charles Dickens contributed to the stereotyping of Jews," says Eisner. "He referred to Fagin as 'The Jew' throughout [early editions of] the book. I take exception to that." In truth, he asserts in the book's Afterword, "[Dickens] never intended to defame the Jewish people...but he abetted the prejudice against them.Oliver Twist became a staple of juvenile literature, and the stereotype was perpetuated.

"Over the years, while teaching sequential art, my lectures invariably had to confront the issues of stereotype," Eisner writes. "I concluded that there was bad stereotype and good stereotype: intention was the key. Since stereotyping is an essential tool in the language of graphic storytelling, it is incumbent on cartoonists to recognize its impact on social judgment. The memory of their awful use by the Nazis in World War II one hundred years later added evidence to the persistence of evil stereotyping. Combating it became an obsessive pursuit, and I realized that I had no choice but to undertake a truer portrait of Fagin by telling his life story in the only way I could."

Determined to humanize Fagin, Eisner crafted a backstory for the character, chronicling how a sweet child whose father is killed by antisemitic hoodlums becomes increasingly hardened as he is victimized because of his Jewish and lower-class origins. ("I am Fagin, a member of a dispersed but noble breed!" the protagonist proclaims. "Jews who are often forced by circumstance to survive in the foul frowsy dens and squalid misery of midnight London are not thieves by choice!"). Along the way, Eisner touches on issues of assimilation (Mr. Isaac D'Israeli, a leader of England's Sephardic community, decides to have his children baptized because "as a gentile, my son Benjamin could one day become Prime Minister!") and Jewish pride (young Fagin watches the great Jewish boxer Daniel Mendoza defeat Joe Ward and hears his father exclaim, "Thank God!! Now all England will know that Jews can fight back!"). Eisner also portrays Fagin, hardened criminal that he is, as somehow still retaining the Jewish values and traditions he learned as a child: at the very end of his life, knowing he will soon be hanged before a cheering mob for a crime he did not commit, Fagin reveals to Oliver the secret location of a long-buried locket, knowing that its contents will forever change the boy's life. Kneeling in prayer on a hard pavement, he recites "Shema Yisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod,"and proclaims to Oliver: "I give you a future."

The cartoonist Joe Kubert (Ragman, Sgt. Rock) also confronted antisemitism in his recent graphic novel Yossel: April 19, 1943, a fictional portrayal of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. As the story unfolds, young Yossel dreams of becoming a comic book artist, but his life unravels when his parents are deported to a concentration camp and he is confined to the ghetto. Tens of thousands of Jews within the ghetto walls are killed, yet Yossel survives because he is able to amuse Nazi soldiers with his cartoon renderings of Nazi superheroes. Eventually Yossel meets up with ghetto resistance leader Mordecai (modeled on Mordecai Anielewicz) and the two learn the horrible truth about the destination of those who are deported daily from the ghetto. They relay the news to the Jewish Council, but are dismayed by its conciliatory response: "We cannot afford to antagonize them"; "we must be patient...put our trust in God." Mordecai later proclaims: "We will not give up. We can fight. We can kill some of them. We can die like human beings."

Kubert, now a 78-year-old comic book legend and founder of the only accredited school devoted solely to the art of cartoon graphics, believes that Yossel's fate could have been his own had his family not left Poland for America in 1926, when he was only two months old. "The basis of the story," he says, "is what would have happened had my parents decided not to come to the United States, but to stay in Europe. This is my 'what-if?' story, what my life would have been" as a young cartoonist in the Warsaw Ghetto, as opposed to "a 13-year-old who in 1939 was already doing professional cartooning in the United States." Compared to most comic books and graphic novels, in which the pencil drawings are inked, the pencil drawings in Yossel are laid bare with no ink overlay, so that the audience can absorb the raw power of the pencil sketches, and thus the raw power of the events unfolding before them. Explains Kubert: "It is as if I were doing the sketches in the ghetto the whole time."

Jewish comics writer Judd Winick--who received a Pulitzer nomination for the graphic novel Pedro and Me (the story of his friendship with the late Pedro Zamora, a former roommate on MTV's The Real World who died of AIDS)--also draws from history in his series, Caper, a fictionalized twelve-issue series comprised of three interlocking stories chronicling the Weiss crime family from the turn of the 20th century to the present day. In each story, a different member of the Weiss family is trying to complete a "caper" of sorts, involving a murder, hence the series' title. In the first story, "Market Street," Jacob (smart and reasonable) and Izzy (a mad-dog killer) are serving as "Toppers" for "Boss" Josef Cohen, a stern yet paternal figure who takes them into his enclave after their father, a smalltime lender, is murdered. Boss owns a big chunk of the city (as the boys explain, "Our job is mostly to hurt people who forget that"), but that doesn't stop him from putting on the trappings of being a committed Jew who chastises Jacob and Izzy for not measuring up ("You're late, boys. Bad enough that you missed shul, but you show up late for the reception of my boy's bar mitzvah. And underdressed. I pay you gentlemen enough, I'd expect you could shop at a better haberdashery"). With the passage of time, Jacob and Izzy begin to realize that Boss is manipulating them and nearly everyone else in town--and they devise a caper to stop the man who has long served as their surrogate father. "In the story there are no good guys," Winick points out; "even the protagonists aren't good guys, and for them Judaism is more their culture than their religion. And the man who is supposedly the most pious man in the community [Boss Cohen] is the worst one by far! When you look at [stories about] the Italian mafia, these are the men who are supposedly good Catholics. How often do we get to portray Jews in these stories? I don't mean in a good or bad way. When we see Jews in gangster stories, they're always miserly, they're always accountants, they're diamond merchants, lawyers. But in this case, they're the gangsters, and they don't discuss what it is to be a Jew; it's just who they are." Like Eisner's portrayal of Fagin, Winick explores the effects of poverty and prejudice upon Jews who have come to the misguided conclusion that crime is the only viable path to financial and emotional survival. But as Winick points out, "This is not [a story] about redemption; it's about revenge."

Postmodern Jewish Comics Icons

"They're all Jewish, superheroes. Superman, you don't think he's Jewish? Coming over from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick a name like that for himself."
--From The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

What was in the '70s a trickle of openly Jewish superheroes (such as Chris Claremont's X-Men character Shadowcat, aka Kitty Pryde; and Paul Kupperberg's Supergirl villain Blackstarr, aka Rachel Berkowitz) became a flood in the '80s.

Among this new generation of explicitly Jewish characters was Reuben Flagg, the protagonist of artist/writer Howard Chaykin's American Flagg (originally published by First Comics), a futuristic story centered around Flagg's mission as deputy of the Chicago branch of a law enforcement unit known as the Plexus Rangers. It is 2031, and America's politicians and corporate elite have resettled in various quadrants of outer space, leaving American cities to the mercy of vicious warlords. A former television actor, Flagg has lost his job as an adult film actor because he is deemed an "undesirable bohemian" with leftist political views; American viewers don't realize he's been replaced by a hologram. Down on his luck, he joins the Plexus Rangers, where he is respected, even revered. Chaykin's message in American Flagg is that we must guard against Nazi-style totalitarianism, which can strike at any time. He also makes a personal statement in giving his protagonist a Jewish identity. "I'm no longer afraid, ashamed, or uninterested enough in my personal background to keep it out of the work," Chaykin has stated. "I'm no longer a Jew masquerading as a gentile through comics."

Meanwhile, at DC Comics, publisher and writer Paul Levitz decided to fashion a Jewish genealogy for the company's 30th-century superhero Colossal Boy, who in Legion of Superheroes grows to a gigantic size in order to fend off evil. Knowing that Colossal Boy's real name is Gim Allon, a name that reminded him of former Israeli Cabinet member Yigal Allon, Levitz decided to expand Colossal Boy's backstory by making the outsized hero a Jew--and in so doing, Colossal Boy's mother Marthe Allon, the president of Earth, became Jewish as well. "That's how you know it's science fiction!" laughs Paul Kupperberg. Levitz also used the series to comment on the issue of interfaith relationships. In "Guess What's Coming to Dinner" (issue #308, February '84), Gim Allon introduces his alien wife Yera--an orange-skinned beauty from the planet Durla--to his parents (they'd secretly married a few issues earlier). After the young couple leaves, Marthe turns to her husband and quips, "Now, I wonder if I can find a way to convince them to bring their kids up Jewish?"--Levitz's way of saying that interfaith relationships will still be an issue in the Jewish community a thousand years from now.

In the '90s, even Superman got into the Jewish act. Comics artist/writer Jon Bogdanove(Man of Steel, Alpha Flight) joined writer Louise Simonson (Power Pack) in crafting a three-part story in the Superman title Man of Steel (issues #80-82, 1998) in which the superhero becomes a Golem who defends the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. Two of the ghetto children, Moishe and Baruch--reminiscent of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster--are mysteriously compelled to draw pictures (Baruch) and tell stories (Moishe) about an "angel" who "would save us"--an angel the Nazis fearfully refer to as a Golem and who looks like a certain Man of Steel. The story serves as a dynamic "what-if?"--what if Superman, a character not coincidentally created in 1938, had actually existed to combat Hitler? What if we'd truly had a Golem of our own?

Explicit Jewish references in mainstream comics are now the norm. In 1988, for example, the Jewish comics writer and British journalist Neil Gaiman created a new, third version of the DC character Sandman, who now took the form of the Lord of Dreams, ruling "The Land of Nod, in the East of [the biblical] Eden." Working Jewish themes into Sandman's storylines, Gaiman describes in one episode how a depressed Dream (short for Lord of Dreams) follows around his chipper sister Death (derived from the kabbalistic notion that the Angel of Death is female) as she goes about her daily chore of collecting departed souls. At one point the macabre siblings visit Harry, an old Jewish man on his deathbed. Harry begs Death not to take his soul before he can recite the Shema; she grants his final wish. The Shema also figures into a Fantastic Four story by Jewish comics writer Peter David (The Incredible Hulk, TV's Babylon 5), who revealed two years ago that The Thing, aka Benjamin Jacob Grimm, is Jewish. In the story, Grimm returns to his childhood neighborhood on the Lower East Side, and mistakenly believing his old friend Mr. Sheckerberg has been fatally wounded by the villain Powderkeg, he recites theShema on Sheckerberg's behalf. "I always thought Ben Grimm had to be Jewish anyway, because he was Jack's alter ego," Kupperberg says about The Thing's co-creator Jack Kirby. "But when these characters were first created, antisemitism was so prevalent, even in an industry run by Jews. We finally reached a time when you stopped hiding being a Jew." Trina Robbins, co-creator of the comics series GoGirl! (a title for young girls about the heroic exploits of Jewish teenager Lindsay Goldman, aka superhero GoGirl), agrees: "When you don't make a big deal about your character being Jewish, that's real equality."

The emergence of Jewish characters in comic books has mirrored American Jewry's own struggle for acceptance in a non-Jewish world. In the Golden Age, writers, cartoonists, and editors intent on creating simple children's entertainment hid subtle Jewish metaphors behind assimilated archetypes. In the Silver Age, Jewish comics creators courted a high school and college-level crowd with tales of both metaphoric mutant "outsiders" and underground comix with occasional Jewish narratives. Now, in the Bronze Age, Jewish comics creators have transformed an industry once marketed to young boys into a well-respected art form that graces the walls of prestigious museums; wins coveted literary prizes; and influences mainstream movies (George Lucas's Star Wars sextet and the Wachowski brothers' Matrix trilogy); best-selling books (Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Jonathan Lethem's recentFortress of Solitude); and fine artists (Roy Lichtenstein and Phillip Guston's comic book iconography). Jews who pioneered this art form, often for little material reward, are superheroes in their own right, for they have created enduring icons of popular culture known around the globe--and, perhaps, beyond.

A Comic Approach to History

Postmodern Jewish Comics Icons

OTHER JEWISH COMICS ARTISTS AND WRITERS

· Adam Kubert, comics artist^[1]

· Al Capp, cartoonist (Li'l Abner)^[2][3]

· Al Hirschfeld, caricaturist^[4]

· Al Jaffee, cartoonist (MAD Magazine)^[5]

· Aline Kominsky-Crumb, cartoonist (Dirty Laundry)^[6]

· Allan Heinberg, comic book writer (Young Avengers)^[7]

· Art Spiegelman, comics writer (Maus)^[2][8]

· Bob Kane, comics artist (Batman)^[1]

· Brian Michael Bendis, comic book writer^[9]

· Daniel Clowes, alternative comics writer (Ghost World)^[10]

· Dave Berg, cartoonist (Mad)^[11]

· Eli Valley, cartoonist and author best known for Diaspora Boy.^[12]

· Gene Colan, comic book artist (Daredevil)^[13]

· Gil Kane, comics artist (Green Lantern)^[14][15]

· Harry Hershfield, cartoonist (Abie the Agent, Desperate Desmond)^[16]

· Harvey Pekar, comix writer (American Splendor)^[18]

· Herblock, cartoonist; three Pulitzer Prizes^[19]

· Howard Chaykin, comic book writer^[20]

· Joe Kubert, comics artist^[1]John Broome^[23]

· Jordan B. Gorfinkel, comic book writer (Batman) and cartoonist^[24]

· Jules Feiffer, cartoonist^[25]

· Lyonel Feininger, cartoonist (Kin-der-Kids) ^[1]

· Mat Tonti, comics writer ("The Book of Secrets")

· Max Gaines, founder of EC Comics, pioneering figure in the creation of the modern comic book^[11]

· Mell Lazarus, cartoonist (Momma, Miss Peach)^[27][28][29]

· Milt Gross, Gross Exaggerations^[1]

· Neal Adams, comic book artist^[30]

· Neil Kleid, cartoonist, graphic designer^[1]

· Nina Paley, cartoonist, animator and free culture activist (Sita Sings the Blues).^[31]

· Peter David, comics writer and "writer of stuff" ^[32]

· Ralph Bakshi, animator (Fritz the Cat, Lord of the Rings)^[33][34]

· Robert Mankoff^[35]

· Roz Chast, cartoonist (the New Yorker)^[35]

· Rube Goldberg, cartoonist^[2][5]

· Trina Robbins, comix writer^[17]

· William Gaines, comics artist and Mad founder^[11]

The History of the Comic Book industry

by Arie Kaplan (www.ArieKaplan.com)

as published by the Union for Reform Judaism 2003 - 2004 (www.urj.org)

Arie Kaplan is a writer for MAD magazine who has also written for Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, and the MTV series Total Request Live.

HOW THE JEWS CREATED THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY
Part I: The Golden Age (1933-1955)

by Arie Kaplan

The comic-book industry was built from the ground up at the height of the Great Depression by enterprising American Jews who fashioned a pantheon of the world's most famous superheroes

Four-Color Forebears

“My father conceived the idea of taking the Sunday pages, folding them over, and folding them once again, and ending up with something roughly the size of today's comic book."
--William M. Gaines

The Golem and Superman

Instinct for Storytelling

"I am a fan of anybody who can make a living in his underwear."
--David Mamet, reflecting on Superman

The Golden Age?

"I have no idea when the Golden Age was [supposed to have been], but as far as I'm concerned, wherever I am is the Golden Age!"
--Stan Lee

Batman & The Joker

"Bill Finger co-created the character of Batman. He was there from day one!"
--Jerry Robinson

Nailing the Nazis

"I found a way to help the war effort by portraying the times in the form of comic characters. I was saying what was on my mind, and I was extremely patriotic!"
--Jack Kirby

All was going great--that is, until....

Cleaning Up the Comics

"It would be just as difficult to explain the harmless thrill of a horror story to a Dr. Wertham as it would be to explain the sublimity of love to a frigid old maid...."
--William M. Gaines

Kurtzman's MAD World

HOW JEWS TRANSFORMED THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY
Part II: The Silver Age (1956-1978)

by Arie Kaplan

But although these updated superheroes boosted sales for DC, the malaise gripping the industry persisted. Comic books needed a good punch in the jaw...and they were about to get it!

The Marvel Age

"When you think about it, The Incredible Hulk is a Golem."
--Stan Lee, referring to the medieval monster of Jewish lore

Courting the College Crowd

Stan Lee was no longer thinking about leaving the comics world. He was too busy thinking up new superheroes--like Spider-Man.

Silver Surfer's debut in the '60s could not have been more timely. He quickly became an ecology icon among the youth of America's burgeoning counterculture, and Marvel's sales soared.

Mutants and Metaphors

"Everything in comics, as in myths, is a hyperbolic metaphor."
--Jon Bogdanove

Openly Jewish, Openly Heroic

"At its foundation, The X-Men had to be a story of hope."
--writer Chris Claremont

By 1975, sales of The X-Men were falling fast. It was time, Marvel execs decided, to revitalize the series. Jewish comics writer Chris Claremont was picked for the job.

Kirby's Fourth World

"When I first saw Darth Vader, I thought, 'Oh, it's Doctor Doom!'"
--Mark (Luke Skywalker) Hamill

Meanwhile, in the Underground...

The Splendor of Being an Ordinary American

"Serious readers have never, for the most part, looked to comics for good literature because, in fact, there are so few good comics that are well-written."
--Harvey Pekar

From Novel Graphics to Graphic Novels

Thus ended the Silver Age of comics. The stage was now set for the next new development: the independent comics boom.

KINGS OF COMICS:
HOW JEWS TRANSFORMED THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY
Part III: The Bronze Age (1979 - )

by Arie Kaplan

From Comix to Graphics

"What I wanted to make was something I'd thought about as a result of reading '60s fanzines...the Great American Novel, but in comics form."
--Art Spiegelman, on the inspiration for Maus

A Comic Approach to History

Postmodern Jewish Comics Icons

A Comic Approach to History

Postmodern Jewish Comics Icons

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