A lot of people know that Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were Jewish. But according to Roy Schwartz – author of “Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero” – the question of Superman’s Jewishness hasn’t been discussed deeply enough. “Many things that are relevant and interesting have been…
(JTA) — This article originally appeared on Alma. I was Jewish to everyone but the Jews. That’s what it felt like to grow up the son of a Cuban mother and Jewish father. I looked exactly like my dad, with his curly hair and deep-set eyes, and I had his last name, Steinberg, stitched on…
For the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, comics — for all their pulpy origins — are a political art form. Spiegelman, author of the serialized graphic novel “Maus,” is something of an elder statesman of the form. He’s also a scholar of its history. So when the Folio Society, a London publisher of glossy illustrated…
Editor’s Note: Legendary comic book creator Stan Lee, who passed away this week, took a strong interest in the Holocaust in recent years. His final published essay appeared as the introduction to the recent book “We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust,” by Neal Adams, Rafael Medoff, and Craig Yoe (IDW/Yoe Books, 2018). “We…
Dark times call for a great hero, and Gotham might just get one. We need her but have done nothing to deserve her: a Jewish, female, queer, justice-loving, semi-nocturnal vigilante with strong ties to bats. The CW has announced that it is working on a “Batwoman” TV show for its 2019 season, created by the…
I don’t know much about superhero movies, but I do know that if the brilliant director Ava DuVernay is going to direct a DC movie based on comics by Jack Kirby, the Jewish artist who created Captain America, that means we’re all going to see a superhero movie. Fresh off directing the major undertaking “A…
(JTA) — DC Comics’ newest writer says that the choices he has made for his new Superman series are “deeply connected to [the character’s] origins.” And those origins are very Jewish. Brian Michael Bendis, who recently jumped ship from Marvel to DC Comics, will start drawing new comic books with the iconic superhero in May….
A pioneer in 1970s underground comics, Trina Robbins has become a revered writer and “herstorian.” But her own history, as the child of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, eluded her. “I divorced myself from Jewish part of my parents,” she tells the Forward. “I was unappreciative of it – a dreadful daughter.” Her latest project changes that –…
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