When The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay started winning awards Chabon was all over NPR (national public radio) talking about his book and the time he spent talking to Will Eisner. One of the things they talked about was that most of the early superheros (specificaly Superman) were created by Jewish writers and artists. This was all around WWII and lots of Jews were fleeing to America and creating new lives for themselves. New names, everything. They talked about how the heros had very very American sounding names. Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, ect. Alien boys shipped to new worlds by their parents. And they talked about the Jewish folk stories and how similar they were to the stories being told in comics. All very interesting stuff. I'll see if I can locate a link...
quote:Originally posted by me I'll see if I can locate a link...
No, I woln't. Use google yer damn selves you lazy bastards. <I'm just pissed because npr.com has an audio transcript of the radio show and I can't listen to it>
Not really "Superheroes", but "Maus" is about a Jewish holocaust survivor & "The Golem's Mighty Swing" is about a Jewish baseball team in the early 20th century.
DC had this Israeli superhero who was one of the Global Guardians (along with superheroes from places like Greece, Ireland, Brazil etc.) and all of his powers were related to figures from Jewish religious history. He had a staff and a ring, and he was bearded, if i'm not mistaken.
I cannot for the life of me remember his name at the moment, and i'm too lazy to go pawing through the back of my comic box like a starving racoon roght now, maybe later.
quote:Originally posted by klint:
Also, no one mentioned Rag-Man.
Referring to THIS Ragman? I always thought the Elaine Lee miniseries with the voodoo vs. Kabbalah leanings was vastly underdeveloped. And the costume of evil souls was keen too.
quote:Originally posted by Storm of Blue vs. Lou Reed's Hair: Wasn't Moon Knight Jewish?
Absolutely. He was the son of a Rabbi and they had a rather extensive treatment of that aspect of his life over the course of 4 or 5 issues in the late 80's. Lovely piece of writing.
I always found interesting how the Silver Surfer origin is a diametral reversion of the biblic tale about Lucifer's (or Satan, whatever, I don't know the difference anymore) fall from grace.
As in: Deity displeased with server dumps servant on earth, from where said servant cannot escape for the rest of his existence. Only the roles are reversed, since the Surfer is good (even though we cannot say that Galactus is evil-evil).
