I’ve recently published two scholarly articles about comic strips and graphic novels. Neither is available online for free, unfortunately, but if you have access to Project Muse, and are curious about a fascinating multimedia phenomenon from the 1910s, please check out “‘Wait for the Next Pictures’: Intertextuality and Cliffhanger Continuity in Early Cinema and Comic Strips,” which appears in Cinema Journal 48:2 (Winter 2009): 3-25.
The other essay, on Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer, appears in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, edited by Ranen Omer-Sherman and Samantha Baskind, and published by Rutgers University Press. It’s called “‘Wanna Watch the Grown-Ups Doin’ Dirty Things?’: Jewish Sexuality and the Early Graphic Novel.”
Breadowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %&*!
By Art Spiegelman
Pantheon. 72 pages. $27.50.
Publishing a literary masterpiece can be a little like creating a golem, it seems: first you’re just proud you were able to create it, then you’re astonished to see how powerful it becomes, and then, suddenly, you’re scared you can’t control it. That’s been Art Spiegelman’s experience, at least, with Maus, one of the finest comic books ever printed and among the great literary achievements of the past quarter century. One panel of Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! – a recent series of Spiegelman’s brief autobiographical comics – makes this clear: “It’s no use…,” Spiegelman’s avatar says, glancing back at a monolithic mousy representation of his father: “No matter how much I run I can’t seem to get out of that mouse’s shadow.” (more…)
Going Global:
The Word-Wise Adventures of Yisrael and Meir: Book One
By Yitzchok Kronblau
Illustrated by Ruth Beifus
80 pages. Arscroll/Mesorah. $24.99.
Trekking Through Time:
The Word-Wise Adventures of Yisrael and Meir: Book Two
By Yitzchok Kronblau
Illustrated by Ruth Beifus
104 pages. Arscroll/Mesorah. $24.99.
Like many comic-book adventure series, The Word-Wise Adventures of Yisrael and Meir begins with a call to save the world. One morning, an Orthodox Jewish kid discovers a way to eliminate pain and suffering. According to a teaching of the Chofetz Chayim, a.k.a. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, “Every single day we wait for Mashiach to come, but—do you hear this—he is being held back because we are speaking loshon hora!” The Messiah, that is, won’t show up until Jews stop breaking the commandments related to improper speech.
The boy and his younger brother set out to make this happen, and though they haven’t been struck by radiation, or empowered by the rays of the sun, or descended from aliens, and though they don’t sport capes or unitards, these boys are clearly the author’s and publisher’s idea of Jewish superheroes. (more…)
A Dangerous Woman
The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman
By Sharon Rudahl
The New Press. 112 pages. $17.95.
Emma Goldman’s life is a writer’s dream—long and sordid, inspiring and debased, full of sex, political courage, and international intrigue. She was, after all, a nice Jewish girl who conspired to break her lover out of prison, inspired a presidential assassin, and penned detailed accounts of her sexual affairs with younger men. Red Emma, as she was known, is widely remembered as the most famous anarchist in turn-of-the-20th-century America, a rebel against conventional morality who crusaded for free speech and birth control, and against exploitation. She’s been an inspiration to radicals for over a century.
Already adapted in novels (like E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime) as well as in movies and plays, treated in Goldman’s thousand-page autobiography and myriad scholarly, commercial, and politically oriented biographies, Goldman’s life has now been translated into the graphic novel medium. The project, Sharon Rudahl’s A Dangerous Woman, has tremendous potential—not only because it promises to present a stylized version of Goldman’s life in vivid pictures, but also because it has been undertaken by a dedicated leftist and feminist fiercely loyal to Goldman’s legacy. Unfortunately, though, A Dangerous Woman doesn’t deliver on its promise. (more…)
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
By Will Eisner
142 pages. W. W. Norton. $23.95.
What’s so comic, exactly, about comic books? As far back as the Golden Age, when the form flourished in the hands of mostly Jewish American young men, relatively few of the word-and-picture narratives to which we ascribe this label have been primarily concerned with humor. The dominant modes have been action, mystery, horror and romance. Still, silly as it sounds, even when they aren’t the least bit funny they’re known as comics. (more…)
The Hebrew Hammer isn’t the only Jew in a frock coat and a black hat meting out justice this winter. In fact, next to the Weiss brothers, lieutenants in San Francisco’s turn-of-the-century Jewish mob, the Hammer looks like a bit of a nebbish.
The brothers are the heroes of “Market Street,” the first story arc in “Caper,” a new monthly series published by DC Comics. “Market Street” will wrap up in the February and March issues of “Caper” and will be followed by two more four-issue arcs, written by Judd Winick and drawn by different artists. Varied in tone and setting, the tales are loosely linked through family connections between characters, and revolve around double-crosses, heists and various criminal misadventures. (more…)