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  • Public Heroes, Secret Jews:Jewish Identity and Comic Books
  • Jennifer Caplan (bio)

"Who was that masked man?" was the common refrain of those who witnessed the Lone Ranger (John Reid) perform some heroic act or feat of derring-do. The Lone Ranger began in 1933 as a radio program, so it was up to the audience to imagine what the man and his mask looked like. By 1938 there was a syndicated comic strip, and in 1948 The Lone Ranger comic book series began its 145-issue run.1 These visual representations created the now iconic look of a man in a simple black domino mask, which was enough of a disguise that no one could recognize the man under the mask. Superman had already established that something as simple as removing or adding a pair of glasses could obscure a hero's identity, so the Lone Ranger's domino mask was more than sufficient as an act of subterfuge.

Putting on or taking off a mask is an almost sacred act within the pages of comic books. The mask is the thing that separates, protects, and creates the liminal space in which an alter ego exists. This essay is going to use what I am calling "masking theory" to think critically about both what it means to have a secret identity and how Jewish comic book characters have had their Jewishness masked and unmasked throughout their history. Masks do not all work the same way. Bruce Wayne wears a mask so that people do not know he is also Batman, but Clark Kent is the mask that Superman wears to hide his otherness. Characters don masks for many reasons, but the most common is to hide something about themselves that they do not think society would understand. Sometimes they are protecting the reputation and family of the "real person" under the mask, but not always. Superman hides in plain sight as Clark Kent just as Wonder Woman hides as Diana Prince; they hide their inhumanity while Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker (Spiderman) hide their humanity. The mask is always a defense mechanism, but what it is defending is not always the same thing. Masking theory, in this case, is focused not only on the characters but also the comic book authors themselves, and what we might infer about them based on what masks they apply to their creations. The masking and unmasking of Jewish characters speaks to what Rachel Kranson calls the "ambivalent embrace" of postwar American Jews and middle-class American identity.2 [End Page 53]

For this study I focus primarily on four characters: The Thing (Ben Grimm), Magneto (Max Eisenhardt), Ragman (Rory Regan), and Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde). Drawing on Tom Morris's work on secret identities, as well as other contemporary theories of comics and graphic novels, I argue that for three out of the four characters, it has been their Jewishness that has been their "secret identity" at least as much as their "real" name. I am beginning with The Thing because his mask is the least stereotypical. His identity was never a secret, so if (as Morris argues) a secret identity is an integral part of the superhero genre, The Thing allows us to ask what his secret might be. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created The Thing, and they and the other Jewish writers like them might have been masking themselves as they were masking their characters. While fear of exposure might have driven art to imitate life, secret identities are nevertheless powerful, in part because they open up space for more: more personality, more diversity, and more exceptionality. A character with two separate yet fully formed identities offers greater space for writers and artists to explore social and political issues, and yet there can be downsides to keeping certain parts of a character hidden, or masked.

In "The Secret of Secret Identities" Morris writes, "for most of the superheroes, a dual identity is primarily about masking. The costume and the superhero persona (from the Latin for 'mask,' or presentation) keep a secret."3 Masking is substantially different from both hiding and making invisible. Masking is about taking something obvious or apparent and...

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