Location also played a 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 occurred to
me that there were an inor-
dinate amount of Jews in the
business, • although in retro-
spect I can see that," says
Jack Abel, now staff pro-
ofreader 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 pro-
.
Will Eisner: 'Everything I do, write
or draw has a Jewish side to it'
fessionally. "Like anybody
who could draw as a kid, I us-
ed to draw cartoons," he
recalls.
• "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. 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. Tbward the
end of this period, he also in-
ked Iron Man at Marvel Com-
ics, DC's up-and-coming com-
petition 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 remain-
ed to this day.
Gil Kane grew up when the
age of radio adventure heroes
was in flower. Raised on a
steady diet of Tbm 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 Man-
drake?'
Kane began bringing his
samples to the publishing
houses when he was 15. At
16, he was hired for 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 work-
ing with Simon and Kirby.
Kane's career was tem-
porarily interrupted when he
entered the service in 1944.
After the war, he began work-
ing for DC Comics, where he
remained . until the
mid-1960s, when he moved to
Marvel.
Kane now lives in Califor-
nia, where he has just com-
pleted 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 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 con-
sidered otherwise undefeat-
able, 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 in-
ner n'shama that responds to
forces around us — just like
the story of the golem in
Jewish lore"
"If you think about it,"
Eisner says, "all of Jewish
cultural history has been
based around Jewish cultural
fighters, like Samson and
David. In the 1940s, we were
facing the Nazis, an apparent-
ly unstoppable force. And
what better way to deal with
a supervillain like Hitler
than with a superhero?"
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," Eisner says.
"As a rule, we tended to try
to keep our culture out of our
work," Abel agrees. "But you
could say the same thing
about the Catholics in the
business. You never saw an
Italian character, for exam-
ple."
I-- --I hat is. changing.
While Jewish comic
book characters are
still underrepre;
sented, 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 realy just Al Rothstein, a
nice Jewish boy who spends
Chanukah 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 includ-
ed among the statesmen and
ambassadors.
Even Petey, the extra-
dimensional demon-with-a-
he art-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 in-
fluences 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.
Milgrom, a native of Hun-
tington Woods and a graduate
of the University of Michigan,
began working in comics in
1972 as an assistant to Super-
man artist Murphy Ander-
son. The relationship led to
more jobs, filling in for inkers
with deadline problems, and
by 1973 he 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 put-
ting Judaism in his work. "If
you use stereotypical Jewish
traits, you get letters com-
plaining," he explains.
Eisner has no such con-
cerns. As the owner of his own
studio in Florida, he has no
one to answer to but the
'In the 1940s, we
were facing the
Nazis, an
apparently
unstoppable force.
And what better
way to deal with a
supervillain like
Hitler than with a
superhero?'
marketplace, and, in his
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 1930s and
The Bullseye Action Portfolio. (c) Joe
Simon and Jack Kirby. Used with
permission.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
31