DC Comics has a new star of his own comic, and instead of going the superhero route, they’ve launched a historical fiction title, exploring homosexuality, art, and political oppression in 1950s America. But the lead character may be familiar to you: It’s Snagglepuss.

That’s right, Snagglepuss, the pepto-bismol colored Hanna-Barbera property most known for exclaiming, “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” now features (following a one-off special last year) in Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles. Here, he’s a star playwright, the darling of the theatre scene and an adoring public. But Snagglepuss has a secret— he’s gay (he’s clearly based off of Tennessee Williams), and in 1953, being outed would mark the end of his career and respectability. With so much at stake, how is he supposed to weather the increasingly stormy political climate? The renowned wit is used to keeping his head down when it counts, but McCarthyism may be moving in…

Because of the artsy New York milieu, Snagglepuss (his close friends call him S.P.) constantly rubs shoulders with Jewish intelligentsia— in the first issue alone, he comforts Lillian Hellman after a harrowing testimony before HUAC, he drinks with Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin Hotel (did you know she had Jewish ancestry?), and he introduces his friends to Peggy Guggenheim. (For the record, these characters aren’t rendered as animals; it’s a world of many species. For example, Snagglepuss’s wife is a lion like him, but his lover is a Cuban human emigre who fled his country when police violence against homosexuals worsened.)

Plus, another running thread throughout the issue is the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. As in, you even see them strapped to the electric chair, raising the stakes for raising the ire of the government. This may legally be a Hanna-Barbera story, but there’s a reason it’s rated T for Teen.

The writer of this series is Mark Russell, whose other works include comic retellings of the Bible, and a Flintstones comic similar in subversive concept to The Snagglepuss Chronicles. And what’s remarkable about the comic is how earnest it is— the reader is immediately told to accept that 1953 New York has both capital punishment and Huckleberry Hound (yes, the blue dog makes an appearance). In fact, the more absurd elements of the anthropomorphic animals balance out the grim subject matter— if Snagglepuss were human, the comic might be heavy-handed (and the realistic, if slightly uncanny valley art-style helps).

Half-nostalgia, half-critique, Snagglepuss functions in an important locale for American Jewish history. That may not be the point of the comic, but it’s certainly present, intended or no. We can only hope Arthur Miller shows up next.

Issue 2 of Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles hits stands early February, so catch up, and get ready.

Cover art by Ben Caldwell

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If you haven’t heard of Len Wein, you still definitely know his work. The comics writer and editor died yesterday at the age of 69, after nearly fifty years in the industry. A member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, Wein may not be a household name like Stan Lee, but he was hugely important just the same, and respected amongst his peers and comic fans alike.

Jews are predominantly associated with the Golden and Silver Age of comics (as in, the early days through 1970), but Wein is a reminder that they’re remained a relevant presence in the industry since.

Let’s go over just a few of his contributions to the world of comics.

• He created Swamp Thing, the horror comic with a brain, a heart, and multiple live-action adaptations.
• He resurrected the X-Men in 1975 after a hiatus of the iconic superhero mutant team. This included one of the first ever appearances of Wolverine, and the introduction of the hugely popular Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler.
• He edited Watchmen, arguably the most important graphic novel of all time.

But let’s take a moment to appreciate one of his more obscure moments— because it’s not every comics writer who decides to bring the Golem to the page.

Strange Tales was a Marvel Anthology series. In Issue #174, from 1974 (during Wein’s very brief gig as Marvel’s editor-in-chief), Wein wrote a story about a Jewish archeologist, Abraham Adamson, who brings young relatives on a desert archeological dig to find the Golem of Prague; Adamson makes it very explicit that the Golem’s purpose is to protect Jews from their enemies. Adamson succeeds in finding the legend, and when he is murdered (by uncomfortable Arab stereotypes, granted), the Golem returns to life and goes on a killing spree, saving Adamson’s family.

The story continued over several issues, and Wein also edited the issue in which Golem fights the Thing, which is amazing because the Thing is Jewish (though it wasn’t explicit at the time) and also looks quite like a Golem himself.

The Golem is not a hugely important comics character, nor does he only appear in this one franchise (a number of writers, Jewish and not, have put the clay creature on the page). But 1974 was a bit early for explicitly Jewish content in comics— this was before Magneto “came out” as Jewish, before Kitty Pryde, before Israeli superhero Sabra.

This story isn’t hugely important (nor is it the first time the Golem appeared in the pages of a comic), but it’s a sort of missing link in how Jewish comics creators expressed their heritage in their works. There had to have been a transitional phase, from needing your your Nazi-punching hero to look so All-American he could have been Aryan to having a girl ward off Dracula with a Magen David. Some of Wein’s famous creations, like Colossus and Swamp Thing, are arguably Golem-like, but here’s the Jewish version of the story in the flesh— er, clay. On the journey from subtext to text, we have this strange little story.

Len Wein was a nerdy Jewish kid who loves superhero comics in the 1950s, and eventually took on the mantle of creation himself. It’s the American Jewish chain of tradition.

Image of Wein via Wikimedia. Comic panels from Strange Tales #174.

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This week marks the centennial of Jack “King” Kirby, arguably the most important contributor to the art form of comics of all-time. Kirby, born Jacob Kurtzberg (the son of Jewish immigrants; you know the drill), is mostly known for his iconic artwork for Marvel Comics. Working with the likes of Jewish writers Joe Simon and Stan Lee, Kirby co-created the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Captain America, just to name a few that have had staying power. But some of Kirby’s most fascinating, innovative work is (comparatively) less-well known, coming after he switched to Marvel’s competitor, DC, and began to write as well as draw, now in more direct control over his creations.

The main result of this DC period is the New Gods, a complex, space operatic struggle of good-and-evil, with an assembly of weird characters in convoluted conflicts. It’s certainly not as simply accessible as, say, Captain America punching Hitler in the face. But it’s still brilliant.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Jewish Artist Jack Kirby Co-Created X-Men and Captain America. But What He Did Next Was Even Better. appeared first on Jewcy.

This past weekend in Brooklyn was FlameCon, aka “The World’s Largest Queer Comic Con.”

Think panels on subjects like the future of queer media or the intersection of queer comics and sex education, stickers for attendees with their preferred pronouns, and a lot of gender-bending cosplay. And it’s a perfect spiritual successor to comics’ early days as a Jewish-created medium.

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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The trailer is out for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, and you have to go watch it immediately. It may not have Gal Gadot, but the film about Wonder Woman’s creator and his family looks amazing.

Honestly, the story is hard to resist. Comics writer William Moulton Marston had a background in psychology, but tried his hand at everything, from film-writing to inventing the lie detector (well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s how he liked to put it). But his personal life was especially ripe for the retelling; he was polyamorous, and lived with his wife, Elizabeth Holloway, and another female partner, Olive Byrne, as well as all their children, under one roof.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

The post Hey, Hollywood: Why No Biopics of Jewish Comic Book Creators? appeared first on Jewcy.

Friends, allow me to introduce you to your new favorite comic book bad guy: Marvel Comics’ Zohar. If you’re wondering based on his name whether or not he has anything to do with kabbalah, you are in for a real treat.

Zohar only appears in two comic issues (Moon Knight #37 and 38), but he makes an impression on any Jewish comic reader. Zohar is the alter-ego of Reuben Davis, a rabbi (yes, rabbi!) from Chicago. His creator is Alan Zelenetz, who is not only a comic book writer and film producer, but also a one time principal at the Yeshiva of Flatbush. So unlike nearly every other pop-cultural invocation of kabbalah, the man actually knew what he was writing.

The comic in which Zohar appears is Moon Knight. The titular superhero was born Marc Spector, to one rabbi Elias, Davis’s mentor. Spector is estranged from his family and Jewish background, but he returns to Chicago for Elias’s funeral, and that’s where the trouble with Zohar begins.

Basically, Davis is a student of kabbalah who goes mad with grief and egomania when his teacher dies, and decides that completely reasonable things to do would be:

1. Fully run with the Jewish mysticism he has learned, which amount to actual super-powers (mostly zapping people with electricity), and go by the masked alter-ego Zohar.
2. Steal his mentor’s body to raise it from the dead (well, turns out you can reanimate a body, but it’s more zombie-like than a full-on resurrection).
3. Murder people whom he dislikes, like anyone else learning Jewish mysticism.
4. Purge people’s sins with their deaths, somehow? That doesn’t seem super Jewish, but OK.

Zohar’s costume is completely bonkers. He only appears in two issues, but he apparently has multiple costumes, one in a dark blue/black, and the other red. They robe has some great trimming, and a nice belt, accompanying jewelry, and even has a gratuitous cape! The pointed hood, though, is uncomfortable. Seriously, Reuben, were you even thinking about the implications? Apparently not, because he also stooped to hiring hoodlums to vandalize a Jewish cemetery, swastikas included, to distract from corpse-stealing.

Zohar tries to murder Marc, not realizing that the latter has a secret identity of his own. He then tries to murder a class of Jewish studies students learning kabbalah, at which he also seems to fail pretty spectacularly. Moon Knight suits up and confronts Zohar, whom he defeats by using a mirror to deflect the villain’s mystic zaps. (Others take care of the resurrected Elias by erasing the Aleph from “Emet” written on his forehead, the same way you take down a Golem.)

Zohar is apprehended by the police, and drained of his powers once his mentor is re-buried (or so we think! Please, someone bring him back). But while his stint at supervillainy may be short-lived, he’s a natural at the rhetoric (seriously, even unconscious he still manages to wax poetic). Let’s celebrate him with a few choice monologues:

“The secrets are safe with me, Father of my soul, and through them mankind shall be brought to penance. Tomorrow I begin with Marc Spector. Your sinful and rebellious son must atone by blood.”

“In the name of heaven, do you think Zohar will allow this mystic wisdom to pass into the hands of the sinful and ignorant? Know the divine spark of justice, mortal woman, but live to warn others!”

“No! These secrets must be mine and mine alone! Neither shall the fool know my name nor the void of wisdom utter its majesty!”

“Ha! Violence filleth the mouth of the wicked, but the prating fool shall fall! Now shall I cleanse you all– in the words of the prophet, ‘Though your sins be red as scarlet they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.'”

In conclusion, bring back Zohar, Jewish mystic melodramatic supervillain of our hearts.

Image of Zohar from Moon Knight #37. Via the Marvel database.

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We’ve basically been waiting forever for a comic book featuring Gloria Steinem as its superhero. Well, Female Force: Gloria Steinem is finally here. Female Force is a comic book series that has already starred important women in politics and art, like Hillary Clinton, Tina Fey, and Adele. It seeks to portray Steinem’s undeniable influence in women’s civil rights, the Huffington Post reports.

“Our goal is to show the behind-the scenes machinations — many of them ignored by the mainstream media — that resulted in Gloria Steinem becoming a leading voice in emerging women’s rights movement,” Davis said in a press release. “A visual medium provides perspective that is not only accessible but more relatable to the average person without losing any of the information involved.”

The 32-page comic book was written by Melissa Seymour and drawn by Angel Bernuy and it will be read by all of us.

(Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty)

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