From: Michael Weiss <[m k w 21] at [cus.cam.ac.uk]> Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe,rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe,rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: Secret Identities: Jewish Comic Book Creators [0 of 2] Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 13:00:00 +0100 SECRET IDENTITIES: JEWISH COMIC-BOOK CREATORS [0 of 2] (Cross-posted to rac.dc-universe and rac.marvel-universe because it contains references to and discussion of characters in those specific universes.) First some background: Back in 1989, when I was fresh out of high school, I interned for a summer at the Jewish News, a weekly newspaper in Metro Detroit. It was a good job, very educational. One day somebody asked me if I knew anything about Bob Kane. (This was the summer the first Batman movie came out.) I started rattling off all kinds of trivia about Jewish comic book creators, and my editor decided this might make a nice feature... There followed one of the most enjoyable jobs of my life. For three weeks I made phone calls to and had long chats with Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Will Eisner, Gil Kane, Jack Abel, and Al Milgrom. (I especially wanted to interview Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster and Bob Kane, but they were unavailable.) I had the opportunity to ask these men, whose work I had admired since I was eight years old, to tell me about the old days when they were just starting out. Jack Kirby sent me some artwork to accompany the article; Eisner sent me an autographed copy of _A_Contract_With_God_. Eisner in particular was a wonderful man. He spent a long time on the phone with me and was very candid about the way Judaism has subtly and overtly influenced his work. And the recent announcement of an homage book to Jack Kirby got me thinking about his contributions to this article. Anyway I dug the article out of my files a few days ago and re-read it. Although my writing style has changed a lot in five years I think it holds up pretty well. I thought some of you might be interested to read what the men who defined the comic-book superhero had to say about the influences on their early work. Some of the references are dated, of course -- Infinity, Inc. and Petey the Demon-Dog from Dr. Fate have long since disappeared from the comics scene. And of course we've all mourned the recent loss of Jack Kirby. Comments and discussion are welcome. SECRET IDENTITIES: JEWISH COMIC-BOOK CREATORS (Cross-posted to rac.dc-universe and rac.marvel-universe because it contains references to and discussion of characters in those specific universes.) An article I wrote almost six years ago, featuring interviews with Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Gil Kane, Jack Abel, Al Milgrom, and Will Eisner about the early days of comic books, and the impact of Jewish creators on the medium. For how this article came to be written, see Part 0 of this series. Comments and discussion are welcome. --------------------------------------------------------- Secret Identities: The real-life faces behind the masks of comic books' greatest super-heroes. By Michael Weiss Rocketed to Earth from the doomed planet Krypton by his parents Jor-El and Lara, young Kal-El was adopted and raised by kindly John and Martha Kent, who, naming the infant Clark, taught him virtue, ethics, and a respect for truth, justice and the American way. Gaining fabulous superpowers under Earth's lesser gravity and yellow sun, Kent vowed to use his abilities for good, gaining fame and renown as the world's greatest superhero -- Superman! Too unbelievable? Then try this one: Created in the mid-1930s by two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Superman languished in publication limbo until 1939, when he was finally purchased by a fledgling publishing company looking for something different to launch its new title, Action Comics. That first appearance spawned dozens of spin-offs, hundreds of imitations, and a new art form that has today developed into a $275 million industry. Welcome to the wonderful world of comic book superheroics: a world where with one magic word Billy Batson could become Captain Marvel, where a bite from a radioactive spider could change meek Peter Parker into the spectacular Spiderman, and where any kid from the Bronx (or Cleveland, or Detroit) could change a brightly- colored fantasy into a profitable career. The comic book was born in 1935 with the publication of Famous Funnies, a magazine-sized reprint collection of daily newspaper comic strips. Obviously, the supply of newspaper strips would not last forever, and so the first original comic book material soon appeared on the scene. It wasn't until the appearance of Superman in 1939, however, that the comic book really took off. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the first issue sold out almost immediately nationwide. Suddenly, an entire generation of artists discovered a new storytelling medium. One of those artists was Jacob Kurtzberg, who was then drawing newspaper editorial cartoons under the name of Jack Kirby. In his 50-year-long career, Kirby was involved in the creation of almost every major character in comics, including Captain America, Spiderman, and the Hulk. "I first met (former partner) Joe Simon just as Superman came out," Kirby recalls. "It was an instant hit. Publishers suddenly came out of nowhere, all wanting someone to create another Superman. Together, Joe and I came up with Captain America." Captain America was born in 1941, as the nation stood at the brink of war. "There was a tremendous search for villains at that time," recalls Simon. "That was when (Batman's nemesis) the Joker was created. Jack and I took a look at the world and decided that Adolf Hitler had to be the ultimate villain. "Once we had our villain, it became a matter of creating a patriotic hero to fight him," Simon says. The Simon-Kirby team soon became as well-known to fans as the Siegel-Shuster team. But these four weren't the only young Jews making their mark in the growing industry. During the first quarter-century of the comic book industry's existence, virtually every major figure in either the creative or business end was Jewish. Consider just a partial list of Jewish comic book figures: Simon and Kirby; Siegel and Shuster; Bob Kane, creator of Batman; Will Eisner, creator of the Spirit, Uncle Sam and Plastic Man; Alfred Harvey, founder of Harvey Comics, home of Casper the friendly ghost and Richie Rich; Julius Schwartz, known as the "father of science-fiction comics"; and countless others. In fact, remembers 45-year comic veteran Gil Kane, "it seemed like almost every guy I knew in the field back then was Jewish. The few exceptions were all Italian." What brought so many young urban Jews to comics? In part, says Kane, it was because of the large number of Jews in the publishing business. "Most of the early comic book people came out of the publishing houses," he says, "and all of the publishing companies in New York were predominantly Jewish, with the exception of Quality, who had a anti-Semitic hiring policy." Location also played an important role. The comic book was born in New York City, and because the industry was so new, it was wide open to the children of immigrants, particularly those on the Lower East Side. "It never really occured to me that there were an inordinate amount of Jews in the business, although in retrospect I can see that," says Jack Abel, now staff proofreader at Marvel Comics. "But then it just seemed like we were all New York guys. Kids growing up in New York saw themselves as comic book artists and gravitated toward that." Abel never thought he would end up in comics professionally. "Like anybody who could draw as a kid, I used to draw cartoons," he recalls, "but after I got out of the Navy, it didn't seem wise to pursue a career in art. "But I didn't get anywhere else, so finally I went back to art school, and soon I landed my first job at Fox Features, which is now defunct," he says. "I would walk around with samples to the various publishing houses, and soon I was supporting myself." Between 1956 and 1967, Abel pencilled and inked war stories for the industry's giant, DC Comics. Toward the end of this period, he also inked Iron Man at Marvel Comics, DC's up-and-coming competition down the block. In 1968 he began working on Superman and the Legion of Super Heroes for DC, and in 1971 he jumped full-time to Marvel, where he has remained to this day. Gil Kane grew up when the age of radio adventure heroes was in flower. Raised on a steady of Tom Mix and Lone Ranger, when the first tear-sheet comic books were printed, Kane became a regular customer. By 1939, he says, "I was indoctrinated by Flash Gordon and Mandrake." Kane began bringing his samples to the publishing houses at the tender age of 15. By age 16, he was hired to his first job at M.L.J. studios, now known as Archie Comics, where he created The Shield and The Wizard. About seven months later, he began working with Simon and Kirby. Kane's career was temporarily interrupted when he entered the service in 1944. After the war, he began working for DC Comics, where he remained until the mid 60s, when he moved to Marvel. Currently, Kane lives in California, where he has just completed a four-book graphic novel adaptation of Wagner's Ring of the Niebelung for DC -- a far cry from the simplistic action-adventure of his youth. The early years of comics saw the creation of what are now familiar genres to all: romance comics, mystery comics, military comics, crime comics -- and, of course, the superhero. "I think that there's a cultural thread underlying the superhero concept," says Will Eisner, whose The Spirit is still being reprinted, more than 45 years after its creation. "The superhero has his origins in the folk hero. He represents an attempt to deal with forces that are considered otherwise undefeatable, and that ties in somehow with the n'shama of the Jewish people. Although we may have thought we were creating Aryan characters, with non-Jewish names like Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and my own Denny Colt, I think we were responding to an inner n'shama that responds to forces around us -- just like the story of the golem in Jewish lore," Eisner says. "If you think about it," Eisner continues, "all of Jewish cultural history has been based around Jewish cultural fighters, like Samson and David. Now, in the 40s, we were facing the Nazis, an apparently unstoppable force. And what better way to deal with a supervillain like Hitler than with a superhero?" he asks, echoing Simon. Regardless of how Jewish the underlying themes of the comic books may have been, until very recently outwardly Jewish characters have been all but nonexistent. "Most of us, at the time, were trying to 'pass.' That was the thing to do," says Eisner. "As a rule, we tended to try to keep our culture out of our work," agrees Abel. "But you could say the same thing about the Catholics in the business. You never saw an Italian character, for example." "In those days, you just didn't go around writing about Jewish heroes," adds Simon. That fact is changing. While Jewish comic book characters are still vastly underrepresented, there are a few notable exceptions. At 7'6" (with an optional additional 3'), Nuklon is one of the most powerful members of the team called Infinity, Inc. But beneath the face mask, skintight costume and flaming red mohawk haircut, he's really just Al Rothstein, a nice Jewish boy who spends Hanukah with his widowed mother, and who recently celebrated his bar mitzvah in a flashback sequence. And when Wonder Woman chose a delegation of the first outsiders to set foot on her native Paradise Island, Rabbi Benjamin Hecht was included among the statesmen and ambassadors. Even Petey, the extra-dimensional demon-with-a-heart- of-gold-in-the-shape-of-a-talking-English-bulldog in the humor/horror comic Dr. Fate, speaks with a yiddish accent that would make Sholom Aleichem proud. Ironically, as Jewish influences find their way into the stories, their influence behind the drawing board is fading. As Jews moved out of the inner city, the industry opened up to a broader range of influences. "Today we're seeing a lot of black and Hispanic creators, for the same reason it used to be Jews and Italians," says Al Milgrom, an artist for Marvel Comics. "The business appeals to a certain economic class." Milgrom, a native of Huntington Woods and a graduate of the University of Michigan, began working in comics in 1972 as an assistant to Superman artist Murphy Anderson. The relationship led to more jobs, filling in for inkers with deadline problems, and by 1973 he had landed his first steady job, inking Captain Marvel and Master of Kung Fu for Marvel. In 1977 he moved back to DC, where he edited and created several titles under the period of mass expansion called "The DC Explosion." When the explosion died out, Milgrom found himself out of a job, and returned to Marvel. Milgrom says he avoids putting Judaism in his work. "If you use stereotypical Jewish traits you get letters complaining. The companies are very sensitive about outside pressure," he explains. Eisner has no such concerns. As the owner of his own studio in Florida, he has no one to answer to but the marketplace, and, in his own words, "a little Yiddishkeit never hurt." Eisner's 1977 graphic novel A Contract With God was one of the first attempts to deal with serious adult themes on a mature level. The portrait of urban life in the 30s and early 40s was a smash in critical circles, but commercially received only mild attention. Undaunted, Eisner continues to experiment with the medium. "My entire life has been devoted to experimentation with the art form, which still hasn't reached maturity. Today, the very word 'comic' is a misnomer, because most of what's out there is not meant to make you laugh, but to make you think," he says. Even in the 30s, Eisner knew he was in the minority. "Most cartoonists did not regard comics as a literary form, as I did. They were looked on as entertainment. Comics were junk food, and the comic artists were untermenschen -- even the daily strip artists looked down on us," he recalls. Eisner differed from his colleagues in other ways as well. Unlike most cartoonists of the time, who sold their copyrights to the syndicates, Eisner insisted on keeping all rights to his work. "Consequently, I was persona non grata at the major houses," he says. "With the exception of Quality, I never worked at any of the major companies." From the mid-40s to the early 70s, Eisner abandoned the world of entertainment comics to experiment with other applications of the medium. He was a pioneer in industrial and commercial applications of comic strips, and soon had a thriving company producing training brochures for General Motors, U.S. Steel, the American Red Cross, and the Department of Defense. "Comics can be a very valuable teaching tool," Eisner explains. "Combining words and pictures in a sequence creates a very powerful tool." In 1980 Eisner wrote a landmark textbook, Comics and Sequential Art, now in its fifth edition. The book is used not only in art schools, but also in film classes in many universities, Eisner says. Today, Eisner is busy teaching at the School of Visual Arts, producing graphic novels, and experimenting with new applications of the medium. "I'm working on a project aimed at the literacy problem," he says. "There are some exciting possibilities of using television applications." Simon also dabbled in other applications of the medium. While he was in the Coast Guard, instead of being sent overseas he was sent to Washington, D.C. to do comic books and strips. "The Coast Guard Academy wanted me to do a recruiting book in comics," he says. "I got a commendation for that." But Simon's greatest successes have been the enduring characters he created with his partner, Jack Kirby. While Captain America was being published by Timely Comics (which later evolved into Marvel), DC was publishing Boy Commandos, one of the most popular comic of the war years. But Simon didn't abandon Timely; he continued to edit the entire line of superheroes, including characters like the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch, both favorites to this day. At DC, Simon and Kirby created the Sandman, Manhunter, the Guardian, and the Newsboy Legion, as well as their most successful creation, Young Romance. "Young Romance was our biggest hit," Simon says. "It was the first romance comic, and it lasted for 10 years on top of the whole field. I think Jack and I were the only two people in comics to have more than one hit, and we had several," he says. "In fact, I created the character of Spiderman, although if you look it up someone else's name is on it," Simon says. "I created him, calling him something else, and somebody took it and went to Marvel with it." Double-dealing and copyright fights were the norm in those early days, says Simon, whose memoirs will soon be published under the title The Comic Book Makers. "The Young Men Who Worked in Comics's Golden Age Were As Bizarre As The Characters They Created," declares the cover blurb, and Simon has the stories to back it up. "We had a mental patient who used to do the horror stories. He was about the best in the business. And then there was the guy who did our crime comics. He ended up bludgeoning a woman to death with an electric iron. He was the foremost figure in crime comics in his day. Some of this stuff was just unbelievable," he adds. The Simon-Kirby team parted ways in the early 50s, says Kirby, because "Joe went on to commercial art, and I felt that anything other than comics was not storytelling." Kirby says he went back and forth between the two major houses, creating The Challengers of the Unknown for DC before settling in at Marvel, where he played a vital role in the creation of what was known as the Marvel Age. New characters like Spiderman, Iron Man, The Hulk, Fantastic Four, and the Black Panther (the first black superhero) added an element of pathos and humanity to the world of superheroics. In the late 60s, Kirby returned amid much fanfare to DC, where he introduced the counterculture to mainstream comics and created an entire modern mythology in The New Gods. "All of my characters are based on real people," Kirby says. "Darkseid (the villain of The New Gods) is the man we never see, the man who runs things. He's not exactly a god, but a super-businessman. "Captain America was me, and I was Captain America. I saw him as part of me, and he always will be. In the fight scenes, when Cap used to take on seven men at once, and five bodies would fly around the room while he punched two in the jaw -- that's how I remember the street fights from my childhood," he says. "Jewish kids then were raised with a belief in moral values. In the movies, good always triumphed over evil. Underneath all of the sophistication of modern comics, all the twists and psychological drama, good triumphs over evil," he says. "Those are the things I learned from my parents and from the Bible. It's part of my Jewish heritage," Kirby says. "I'm part of a generation that was very conscious of our Jewishness, but we were not Jewish scholars," adds Eisner. "As time went on, I developed a strong Jewish identity. I read as much about Jewish things as I can. Right now, I'm working through Maimonides and through Paul Johnson's History of the Jews," he says. "If you scratch through the surface, everything I do, write or draw has a Jewish side to it." -- END -- (c) 1990 by Michael Weiss. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without the consent of the author, except for personal use. +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | "... And thirteen minus seven is five! Well, six, actually, but | | it's the idea that's the important thing." -- Tom Lehrer in "The | | New Math," presciently describing my exams . | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Weiss "Got my mojo working!" Darwin College | | [m k w 21] at [cam.ac.uk] -- Muddy Waters Cambridge CB3 9EU | | WWW Home page: http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/home1/mkw21/www/home.html | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+