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Interesting article on Superman and Jewish contributions to the comic industry:
(Very cool, by the way, that Kal-El is partially re-worked Hebrew for "All that is God". I never knew that! (one comment in response posts under the story pointed out that Kal-El isn't literal Hebrew for "All that is God," it's tweaked just a bit.
www.newsarama.com
JOURNEY INTO COMICS: PROPS FROM UNUSUAL CORNERS
by Michael Sangiacomo
The New York Times had a recent Sunday story praising the art of Jack Kirby, too bad the art used was decidedly non-Kirby Ultimate X-Men. Right there on the jump was a story of a nostalgic trip to a comic shop. Both articles were pretty lightweight, though it was nice to see a photo of Brian Bendis’ amazing Alias comic with the second article. News about the new Batman movie, the various Marvel movies and an occasional business story about comics pop up like pimples on prom night.
But perhaps the most surprising story was the on the cover of the Fall 2003 issue of the Reform Judaism magazine: “How Jews Created The Comic Book Industry.” The entire cover was a five-panel comic style depicting two Jewish kids named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creating a super-hero drawn by Jon Bogdanove.
[the full article is now online, at: http://www.uahc.org/rjmag/03fall/comics.shtml ]
Arie Kaplan’s article was surprisingly good, amazingly accurate and thought-provoking. It even taught me something new that I bet would be a surprise to many folks: Superman’s real name, Kal-El is Hebrew for “All that is God.”
Kaplan writes about how Jews like Siegel and Shuster; Spirit creator Will Eisner, Marvel godfathers Stan Lee (Lieber) Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzburg), “Batman” creator Bob Kane (Bob Kahn) and “MAD Magazine’s” Al Jaffe and Dave Berg were instrumental in shaping the young industry. Of course, those are just a few of the many Jewish men, and a few women, who left a mark.
Jaffe explained that in the 1930s newspapers and advertising agencies were not hiring Jews, so they “drifted into the comic book business” because comic publishers were mainly Jewish. The lengthy article takes the readers right through the 1950s to the Frederic Wertham witch hunts that nearly destroyed the industry. The final proof of the influence of Jews on the industry is in the simple fact that in 1933 Max Gaines (Ginzberg) created the comic book. He was trying to come up with a way to make money to feed his family, including his son William Gaines who would later found EC Comics and MAD.
The story says that Max began reading his beloved collection of Sunday comics to raise his spirits and come up with the notion that if he enjoyed reading the collected Sunday comics in one sitting, others would too. He persuaded Eastern Publications to collect the Sunday comics of characters like “Mutt and Jeff” and package them as a comic book. In February, 1934, Famous Funnies #1 landed on newsstands and...well you know what happened after that. The article’s author, Arie Kaplan, is a writer for MAD. |
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