January 03, 2008
I read someplace where Danny Fingeroth, the author of the book under review, noted that most names that end in “man” are Jewish. He then listed typical Jewish names: Grossman, Silverman, Goldman, Zuckerman, Pearlman and concluded with Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and other “man”-ish comic-book superheroes.
Is it a coincidence that Jerry Siegal and Joel Shuster, two Jews, invented Superman? That Bob Kane, who was Jewish, created Batman? That most of those involved in the creation of the comic-book industry were Jews? Is there a connection between their being Jewish and the emergence of the superhero — or, to put it another way: Is Superman Jewish?
I don’t know who the reading audience is for comic books and graphic novels, but it is a thriving business. One cannot speak intelligently about popular culture without including the appeal of the comic book industry and the manner in which many of its superheroes have been popularized in film. From Superman and Batman to the X-Men, the film versions of the adventures of these characters have often been blockbuster hits. What’s more, a plethora of books have recently appeared that explore the Jewish origins of the comic-books creators. Among the better studies are Up, Up and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero by Rabbi Simcha Weinstein (Leviathan Press) and, now, Fingeroth’s latest work.
Which brings us to Disguised as Clark Kent. Fingeroth, the author of, among other works, Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Our Selves and Our Society (Continuum) and former group editor of Marvel’s Spider-Man comics, contends that “whether running from it or toward it, the Jewish element in these [comic book] creators’ work is essential to it.” Fingeroth recognizes that not everyone agrees with his argument. He cites Will Eisner, perhaps the most important of the early comic-book pioneers and the creator of The Spirit (whom Jules Feiffer, at one time Eisner’s assistant, always thought was a Jewish character), who stated that the fact that the comics industry was founded and peopled by Jews was simply a matter of coincidence.
Eisner once reflected: “There were Jews in the medium because it was a crap medium…an easy medium to get into. So…you had a medium that was regarded as trash, that nobody really wanted to go into...and a group of people who…brought with them their 2,000-year history of storytelling…. The only way they communicated the technique of survival to each other was telling stories. They wrote the Bible.”
Fingeroth admits that in researching his book, many of the creators of the superheroes he interviewed denied that there was anything particularly Jewish about their creations. They also claimed that they never experienced anti-Semitism in the comic-book business nor did they recollect any serious discussions with their peers about how predominantly Jewish the business and the creative end of the industry were.
Fingeroth, nevertheless, disagrees with this assessment. He contends that Jews have been attracted to social movements such as socialism, communism, Zionism, and Freudianism What they had in common was “a desire to rebuild the world in a way that would transcend the petty hates and prejudices of the human condition.” Fingeroth notes that the comic-book industry was preceded by the world of science fiction writing, which found its outlet in the pulp magazines, foremost of which was one edited by a Jewish immigrant, Hugo Gernsback. Like the comic books, these publications included stories, mostly by Jews, that explored the possibilities of new technologies as a means to improve humankind’s condition.
The superhero, Fingeroth argues, evolved from this tradition. Is it too much of an exaggeration to note that the Jewish value of tikun olam (repairing the world) is what Superman and the other superheroes created mostly by Jews is all about? There is also the matter of hiding one’s identity so as to avoid discrimination. After all, Superman is an alien who came from a distant planet — Is Krypton a metaphor for Lodz or another shtetl in Eastern Europe? — and, like many Jews who came to America and attempted to assimilate, he disguised his true identity (Clark Kent as John Garfield perhaps?).
Fingeroth further notes that Jewish cartoonist Jack Kirby’s Spider-Man, who is described by his creator as a misunderstood adolescent longing to be acknowledged as the well-intentioned person he was, echoed the immigrant Jews’ quest for acceptance. Similarly, the X-Men were members of a persecuted group (mutants) who just wanted to fit into a “world that hates and fears them.”
Fingeroth notes that by the 1970s, the ethnic background of the superhero no longer needed to be disguised, and the comic-book industry proceeded to showcase the identities of certain Jewish characters. (The character Kitty Pryde in the X-Men comic-strip, for example, is openly Jewish). For some, states Fingeroth, the Jewish content was incidental to the work, whereas for others, it was “the raison d’etre for what they were doing.”
This very interesting book sheds light not only on the role Jews have played in the creation of the comic-book superhero, but also their enormous contribution to American popular culture in general. I’m, however, not yet entirely convinced by Fingeroth that Superman is Jewish.
‘As a Matter of Fact, I Am Jewish’
ABOUT MAGNETO in his two X-Men films, [director Bryan] Singer, in the same interview, has this to say: “In the comic book, he was in a concentration camp, but he was not necessarily Jewish. I made the decision [to make Magneto definitely Jewish]…because that’s the way it worked [in the camps]. Jews were transported primarily together, and if I was going to put yellow stars [of David] on these extras, I was going to be putting one on young Erik [Magneto].” In Singer’s X-Men movies, the photographic concentration camp imagery involving Magneto’s past is more visceral than even the most powerfully drawn comic could ever be, hence Singer’s decision to emphatically declare what the comics have not yet said. The theme of mutant as other, subject to vilification and persecution like the Jews of Eastern Europe, is played on to a great degree in the films. Magneto’s vow of “never again” resonates like that of the Jewish Holocaust survivor Singer’s films have declared him to be.
Significantly, the X-Men movie franchise was produced by the Israeli-American longtime Marvel executive Avi Arad, who, in commenting on the relationship between Xavier and Magneto, has said of the latter in a 2005 article in The Jerusalem Report: “I would look, ideologically, more to [the militant] Jabotinsky and Begin than to [the moderate] Ben Gurion. Magneto, to me, is not a villain. But he becomes more like [extremist Meir] Kahane the more frustrated he is with the way the world is approaching the ones who are different.” For the creators of the X-Men films, at least, there is more going on in them than simple stories of superhuman beings inflicting violence on each other.
— From Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero by Danny Fingeroth