Here's an exclusive sneak-peek at Arie Kaplan's forthcoming book, From Krakow to Krypton: A History of Jews in Comics.
Feel free to leave the author a comment or delve into a particular point. And look for the book in 2008!
Jews and comic books. A curious topic. One wouldn’t group the two subjects together as readily as, say, Jews and comedy or African Americans and hip-hop. But there it is. Those in the know realize that Jews almost single handedly built the comic book industry from the ground up. And I should know. For the past five years, I’ve immersed myself in this topic.
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In 2002, I was approached by one of my freelance clients to write a series on Jews in comic books. I’d been writing for MAD Magazine for two years, and apparently I was the guy to write this series. After all, MAD started out in 1952 as a comic book. In fact, to this day it’s the last remaining EC Comic. EC was once a flourishing line of comics published by Bill Gaines, who took over from his father Max Gaines. And Max invented the comic book. Invented it. So, by virtue of my being a MAD writer, I’m bound to this history. Makes you think.
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Needless to say, I took my quest seriously. The first person I interviewed was my MAD colleague Al Jaffee, he of the “MAD Fold-In” and “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” Turns out that not only is Al an amazing interview subject, he’s also the Zelig of comics! He knows everyone. “You know who you should interview next?” he asked. “Will Eisner. Want his phone number?” I nodded dumbly, amazed that he was just giving me the phone number of Will Eisner, father of the modern graphic novel. Every marquee name in comics—Stan Lee, Joe Kubert, Jerry Robinson—has some connection to Al Jaffee. His name opened up a lot of doors, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I went on to re-interview many of those same people when the time came to expand the “Jews in comics” magazine series into a book. So unless I’ve noted otherwise, the interviews in this manuscript were conducted by yours truly. But this book isn’t merely a series of interview quotes. There’s a real story here. Some of the same names—Lee, Kirby, Siegel, Shuster, Eisner, and some dude named Kurtzman—reappear throughout, giving the story its spine. Like many narratives about the Jewish people, this is the story of a tradition. A tradition that was handed down from one generation to the next. Only in this case, that tradition is comics. (As opposed to, say, textiles.)
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The story of Jews’ involvement in comic books is a reflection of Jews’ changing status in American society. Early Jewish cartoonists, street kids with no formal artistic training, wrote and drew comic books to feed their families. It came from an instinct for survival, and this is evident in the thousands of crude superhero yarns that were so hastily churned out during the industry’s so-called “Golden Age.” When one thinks of a Jewish comics artist during the Golden Age, one thinks of legendary cartoonist Jack “The King” Kirby hunched over a desk in some mythical bullpen, green cigar poking out of his mouth, wiping cigar ash off the pages as he curses to himself in fractured Brooklynese. And even before it became “okay” to discuss one’s ethnicity in the pages of a comic book, Jewish artists and writers like Kirby and Jerry Siegel were concealing subtle Jewish “signifiers” in comic book characters such as Captain America and Superman. But more on that later.
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Young Jewish comics professionals that emerged during the sixties and seventies were the first generation to have grown up on the idiom itself, and thus they had a vocabulary to work from. They were second-generation comic nuts, and like their baby boomer brethren in the film and TV industry, they would sometimes put Jewish supporting characters in their stories. Their underground comics colleagues, however, often brought their Jewish characters center-stage, telling stories that were shocking in their audacity and sometimes just as crude as their Golden Age predecessors.
Then we come to the current crop of Jewish comic book writers and artists. Gone completely are the green cigars, the street-kid lingo, the reliance on old-fashioned superhero convention. Absent too is the self-consciousness about Jewish identity. Today’s Jewish comics professionals wear their ethnicity proudly on their sleeves. They tell stories of Jewish life in their comics as though it were no big deal. And to them it isn’t. Some of them work on intimate personal graphic novels with one hand while crafting high-concept superhero yarns with the other. They’re intellectual virtuosos, stylishly dressed, and perhaps even a tad overeducated. If they own the rights to their characters, an unthinkable notion in the Golden Age, said characters have probably been optioned by a production company or film studio with an eye towards developing a movie franchise. Yes, times have changed for the Jewish comics professional. If only The King could see them now.
Arie Kaplan~
Check out some of Arie's work on Mad Magazine here.
To hear Arie speak about Judaism and comix, click here or here.
Curious about Arie's work writing comics?
Take a look at Dave Danger, or get the scoop on his upcoming Speed Racer comic.
If you're really digging what he has to say check out his latest book, Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed!