Up, Up and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, And Values Shaped the Comic Book

8/10/2019 Up, Up and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, And Values Shaped the Comic Book

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Up, Up and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book

Superhero by Simcha WeinsteinReview by: Robert G. WeinerMELUS, Vol. 32, No. 3, Coloring America: Multi-Ethnic Engagements with Graphic Narrative(Fall, 2007), pp. 315-318Published by: Oxford University Presson behalf of The Society for the Study of the Multi-EthnicLiterature of the United States (MELUS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029823.

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is perceptive and revealing. He does an especially good job exam-

ining Addams's attack on the family and, by extension, middle

class America.

The final artist, Saul Steinberg, has a status analogous to

Topliss himself: the outsider to American culture turning his eye

on an adopted country. Born in Romania, educated in Italy, then

emigrating to America, Steinberg brings his Old World Jewish

heritage to the New World and uses his art to understandthe

contradictoryexperience he encounters. The outsider artist suc-

ceeds in revealing the New World even more clearly to its inhabi-

tants, embodied best in Steinberg's famous 1976 cover "View of

the World from 9th Avenue." Topliss's analysis of this iconic

drawing is perhaps the finest study in a book filled with excellent

examinations. One comes away from the chapter fully convinced

of Topliss's pronouncement f Steinbergas a genius.

A short final chapter sets the cartoons in contrast to the other

pervasive art of the magazine: advertising.The chapter s interest-

ing, but perhapsnot all that necessary. Topliss has alreadydone his

work, and done it exceptionally well. He gives us a look at art

centralto the first fifty years of The New Yorker,art that might at

first seem peripheral to American culture of the time, but feels

absolutely centralafterreading his insightful and perceptivestudy.

John Bird

WinthropUniversity

Up, Up and Oy Vey : How Jewish History, Culture,

and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero. Sim-

cha Weinstein. Baltimore: Leviathan Press, 2006. 150

pages. $19.95 paper.

There are two main aspects of American popular culture that

were more or less created by Jews: Hollywood and comic books.

In terms of Hollywood, this has been well documented,but in the

case of comics, there has not been nearly the same amount of

315

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documentation. There has also been little exploration of the

Jewishness of both the creators and the major superheroes.Who

would have thought that Spider-Man, he Justice League, Batman,

and, most unlikely of all, the Hulk have Jewish connections?With

Up, Up, and Oy Vey, Simcha Weinstein rectifies this by looking at

how Jewish history, culture,values, and theology helped shape and

create the comic book industry and its superheroes. Given the

recent upsurge of Christian-orientedsuperhero studies like H.

Michael Brewer's Who Needs a Superhero? (2004), David Zim-

merman's Comic Book Character (2004), Greg Garrett's Holy

Superheroes (2005), and Stephen Skelton's The Gospel According

to the World's Greatest Superhero(2006), it appears hat the time

is right for Up, Up and Oy Vey. The above-mentioned books

contain little real historical value, but Weinstein's text is filled

with contexts and resources that highlight the links between

superheroesand Jewish ideology.

Today it is no secret that those creatorswho defined the Golden

Age of comics-Stan Lee, Martin Goodman, Joe Simon, Bob

Kane, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Will Eisner, Mort

Weisinger, and Julies Schwartz-came from Jewish backgrounds.

As Weinstein points out, during the late thirties and forties, many

of them had to change their Jewish-soundingnames in orderto get

jobs and to avoid the Jewish quota system used by many publish-

ers. In that era, comics were looked down upon, both culturallyand

as a business. Similar to the ways the film industry, largely

founded by the Jewish studio moguls, had been considered cultur-

ally suspect, so too were comics consideredpabulum n their time.

Not many gentiles were interested n producingcomics.

Weinstein successfully compares many Jewish theological

principles with those of the major superheroes.He quotes from a

wide variety of sources, including the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh),

the Torah,the Talmud,the Kabblalah,and various Jewish sages, to

demonstratehis points. One could argue that Jews are People of

the "comic" Book. The Jewish role in the history of the comic

book can not be underestimated,and there are essays devoted to

each of the following heroes: Superman,Batman, Spider-Man,X-

Men, Justice League, the Hulk, the Spirit, Captain America, and

the FantasticFour. It certainlymakes sense that Superman, he first

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comic book superhero, and the prototype for all those that fol-

lowed, is included. His name, KA-EL means, "All that is God" in

Hebrew. It also makes sense to believe that many of the Jewish

creators of these comic heroes, either consciously or subcon-

sciously, had the Jewish story of the Golem in mind in creating

their heroes. Indeed, Superman'sJewish connection was kept alive

into the 1990s through he television show Seinfeld.

Weinstein even documents the more recent Jewish connections

for nearly all the superheroes covered in this book. Examples

include the Thing, from The Fantastic Four, coming "out of the

closet" and admitting hat he is Jewish; the Atom's desire to marry

someone Jewish; Batman's alternateuniverse story in which his

alter ego is the Jewish man, Baruch Wane; and Spider-Man's

recent dealings with the Jewish tailor, Leo Zelinsky. Weinstein

also points out that many of the currentcrop of writers, filmmak-

ers, and comics artists who employ graphic narrativeor superhe-

roes in their work are Jewish, including Bryan Singer, Sam Rami,

Michael Chabon,Neal Gaiman,Paul Levitz, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert,

Ben Katchor,and Daniel Clowes.

Two of the more interesting,and more blatantly,Jewish comics

charactersare the mutants Magneto and Kitty Pryde from X-Men

and Ucanny X-Men. Magneto, the X-Men's main nemesis, is

portrayedas a survivorof Auschwitz and, at one time, a memberof

the Israeli secret service, Mossad. Kitty Pryde was createdby Chris

Claremont,a Jew, who specifically designed her to be Jewish, and

proud of it. The episode in which Kitty lights the traditional

Yartzeit candle, after the death of her former lover and friend,

Colossus, is reprinted in Weinstein's book, as is the one where

Kitty and Magneto attenda gatheringof Holocaust survivorsat the

National Holocaust Memorial n Washington,DC.

The most curious chapter is the one on the Hulk. While this

superherohas no overt Jewish connections, Weinstein is quick to

point out that the Hulk resembles the Golem, and one of the

recurringcharacters n the Hulk mythos is the Jewish doctor, Doc

Samson. The Jewish kabbalist, the Arizal, is invoked when dis-

cussing the Hulk's anger problem,but perhaps he most interesting

Jewish connection is when the Hulk meets the Israeli superhero,

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Sabra, and they end up working together. Weinstein demonstrates

that, like the Jews, the Hulk is often mistreatedand misunderstood.

The book is short and beautifully written. Weinstein, a rabbi by

profession, manages to bring in many complex Jewish ideas. He

could have taken hundredsof pages to cover the subjectmatter,but

his prose is very concise, writtenmore for the common reader han

a more detail-oriented scholar. The book would have benefited

from a discussion of real Jewish Golems used in comic book

series, such as those included in Marvel's Strange Tales and

Marvel Two-in-One, both published in the 1970s. Roy Thomas

also invoked the Golem mythos in his comic book, Invaders. In

addition, a chapter in which Weinstein discusses more recent

Jewish superheroes, Todd Norlander's Shaloman and Alan

Oirich's the Jewish Hero Corps, would make for fascinating

reading. Still, Up, Up and Oy Vey belongs in both public and

academic libraries,and deserves to be read by anyone interested n

the history of comics and its connections to Jewish culture.

Robert G. Weiner

Mahon Library,Lubbock,TX

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Up, Up and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, And Values Shaped the Comic Book