The Quest for Jewish Belief and Identity in the Graphic Novel

Introduction

Introduction One of the most exciting literary and artistic developments of the past forty years is the emergence of the graphic, or comic book, novel. An extended comic book that expands the possibilities of the traditional comic book and that is unconstrained by the cheap production values and severely limited subject matter of the traditional comics, the graphic novel transcends verbal and visual limitations in order to tackle, often with great subtlety, the full range of subjects that traditional fiction and nonfiction cover, using the many resources available to all writers and artists. While the term “graphic novel” appears to indicate only fictional creations, this term as it is presently understood in the culture also covers nonfictional works, and therefore it is used in this book to describe autobiographies, biographies, and histories as well as fiction. To avoid any confusion, in my text I make it clear when a given graphic “novel” is an autobiography, biography, or history rather than a work of fiction. As a technical note, I should also add that I have included page references to the graphic novels when they themselves have page numbers indicated, but I have been unable to include page numbers when the graphic novels themselves do not have any. The traditional American comics always included Jews among their creators . In the early period of the American comics, circa 1890–1930, there were such comics artists and writers as Al Hirschfeld, whose lively and original Abie the Agent was based on a Jewish character, and Milt Gross, whose Nize Baby used Yiddishisms and discussed the lives of Jewish immigrants into the United States. Gross’s He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel was a wordless, silent-film-like graphic novel (in the tradition of Belgian artist Franz Masereel and the American Lynd Ward), which satirically treated the typically American theme of the honest, straight-shooting outdoorsman versus the robber capitalist. That was the age of overt ethnicity during a time of mass immigration into the United States. In the period from 1930– 45, superheroes flourished, and the creators of Superman (Jerry Siegel and 2 Introduction Joe Shuster); Batman (Bob Kane and Bill Finger); and, later on, the Marvel superheroes (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) were Jewish. And (as Arie Kaplan and Larry Tye have pointed out), Superman has much in common with the Golem, who, according to Jewish legend, was an early superhero created by a wonder-working rabbi to defend the Jews against anti-Semitic attacks. After the war, Mad magazine was created by Harvey Kurtzman, who was working for William Gaines, the founder of EC Comics, whose father Max (né Ginsberg or Ginzberg) had created the comic book in the 1930s when he realized, while perusing old comic strips, that comics could be bound in magazine form and sold as separate issues on a regular basis. Both Kurtzman and Gaines were Jewish, and Mad spurred the age of counterculture comics, in which once again many Jews were prominent. The first graphic novel with words is attributed to Will Eisner, who was also Jewish. As early as 1941 he felt that comics could become a full-fledged, unfettered art form, but it was only in 1978 with his A Contract with God that this dream was realized . All of these writers and artists demonstrate the creative interaction of Jewish and American cultural themes. As in the past age of the American comics, many of the new graphic novelists today are Jews and, quite naturally, one of their topics is Jewish religious belief or other, related beliefs—belief in the Jewish people (that is, in Jews as a group sharing a common fate) or Jewish identity; belief in Israel; and belief in the persistence of anti-Semitism. Since many Jews today are secular, it would not be unexpected to find many Jews skeptical of religious belief. Such is indeed the case with some graphic novel creators, but, not surprisingly , there is a spectrum in their works, too, ranging from denial and doubt to grudging belief and full belief. And there is also a spectrum of belief in identity with Israel on a political level: some Jews view Israel critically, usually from a left-of-center viewpoint; but even those politically critical of Israel, as well as all of the other Jewish graphic novelists studied here, seem to feel some identity with the Jewish people as a whole. The purpose of this book is to expose the reader to the variety, power, and...