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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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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If your local comic book nerd is upset today, it’s not because of Logan (no, that’s actually supposed to be good!). It’s because Magneto has been linked with Hydra.

If your eyes glazed over, no worries— Magneto is an all-important comic book character, sometimes villain, sometimes hero, and Hydra is a Big, Evil, Secret organization that has roots back in Nazi Germany. And what happened specifically? To promote an upcoming comic release, Secret Empire, Marvel has released a cover featuring Magneto as a member of Hydra.

Yes, that’s all that this is about… so far. It’s not clear if this cover indicates that the Master of Magnetism is actually joining the ranks of Hydra, or if it’s just a visual metaphor— as in, no one is safe! Who could possibly be a double agent? It could be the last person you expected! (And yes, Magneto would be the last person you’d expect.)

Fans were overall upset when Marvel was revealed that good ol’ Captain America was secretly a Hydra Agent— after all, Steve Rogers himself is in part a Jewish metaphor, invented for the purpose of punching Hitler in the face. And Cap wasn’t even the first time a Jewish-coded character was unfortunately linked with the fascist international conspiracy (remember Senator Stern?).

But Magneto is on a whole other level— he’s explicitly Jewish, a Holocaust survivor, and no friend of Hydra up to this point (Oh, look, here’s a multi-part blog detailing all of the many, many times Magneto hated the Red Skull’s gross Nazi butt).

The writer of Secret Empire is Nick Spencer, who has insinuated on Twitter that this is really a marketing ploy, but he is the same author who made Cap a Hydra agent, so anything’s possible. Marvel knew what they were doing with this cover (drawn by Dan More); shock value was the point. Who knows how far that might extend?

Regardless, fans on social media are giving Spencer a piece of their minds.  They’re mad.

Secret Empire premieres next month, and certainly Marvel hopes that your rage brings you to a local comic book store to pick up a copy and find out if Magneto is, in fact, Nazi-adjacent now. In any case, they get free publicity in articles like this one.

Image by Dan Mora

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‘What is this that God hath done unto us?’—Genesis 42:28

It is well known within the Marvel comics universe that Magneto is Jewish. While hinted at vaguely since his inception, Magneto “came out” of the shul in the 80’s, and his Jewry has been, if not forefront and center, then at least a constant undertone to his character ever since. Indeed, much of Magneto’s hatred and mistrust of humanity could—and has been—traced to the loss of his family as a child at the hands of the Third Reich. Numerous references in the comics—including a self-titled standalone run focused on Magneto’s bildungsroman in Hitler’s Germany—make sure that readers don’t forget this central aspect of the sometimes villain/sometimes anti-hero’s backstory.

Even the movie trilogies (both original and new) make a point of mentioning Magneto’s heritage (though not nearly well enough), perhaps due in part to the Jewishness of Bryan Singer, who has been involved in all six films, directing four of them. What seemingly appears as a victory of ethno-religious diversity, upon further examination, begs the question: how does Marvel, and pop culture at large, view the Jew?

Due to their wild—if somewhat varied—success, the portrayal of Magneto by the movie franchise is the image most X-Men fans have of the “master of magnetism.” A sufferer of loss, Magneto is bent on assuring the safety and supremacy of mutantkind, led by his Brotherhood, no matter the cost, even at the expense of the lives of humans and mutants alike. His ethnocentric militarism, perhaps not dissimilar to the Israelites’ tribal conquest of the Promised Land, acts as a foil to his rival and (former) best friend Charles Xavier’s pacifism and Christ-like love and hope in humanity. This creates a dichotomous narrative wherein Christian coding exemplifies and equates compassion and pacifism with Christ, while Jews are maligned by (Christian) interpretations of God in the Old Testament as a vengeful, distant force. It excludes a whole realm of pathos from the Jewish psychology and enforces a negative, inherently anti-Semitic association between Jews and cruelty.

Evidence of this can be seen in Magneto’s storyline, across which a Moses metaphor, with a little stretching, can be neatly laid: a common man turned leader, promising to free mutants from the bondage and tyranny of humankind, who leads his followers through multiple bloody conflicts until they reach their Israel: the island sanctuary of Genosha. Though sometimes convinced to work alongside the X-Men for the greater good, Magneto remains—at least in the movies—opposed to and highly skeptical of Xavier’s philosophy, mainly due to his willingness to harm humans in his quest for liberation. This Jewish reading of Magneto, however, is a purely extrinsic viewpoint, which the movies do not at all portray or promote. Instead, Marvel movies see the Jew as one thing only: one who suffers.

The most striking reference to Magneto’s Jewishness, if due not to its gravitas then to its frequency, is the somewhat hackneyed “Holocaust Survivor” trope, which both movie trilogies embrace in nearly identical scenes. Magneto, a young boy, is torn from the arms of his mother at the gates of Auschwitz (beneath the rain, of course), and while screaming and reaching back for her, his burgeoning powers twist and warp the barbed-wire fence that now separates them. His survivorhood is referenced later, either through pointed language or shots of tattooed numbers on his forearm, to ensure the viewer does not forget that Magneto lived through the Holocaust.

Any reference to Magneto’s Jewishness or Judaism (save for a few brief frames of a Chanukah flashback) are nonexistent. Though more attention has been paid to Magneto’s heritage within the comics, this coverage has been inconsistent, with scattered examples spread across decades and multiple creative teams. The references are there, but only for those willing to search.

Now, this distortion for one of Magneto’s primary aspects could be forgiven, seeing as X-Men is not a self-designated Jewish comic (despite the Jewishness of its two creators), except for the fact that this excessive hearkening to Magneto’s survival of the Shoah reinforces this idea that a Jew can be reduced to an overplayed image of an emaciated victim in striped pajamas. What it does is create a narrative of victimhood, through which, and only through which, a character’s Jewish identity is given voice. This is not to suggest that audiences need a flashback of Magneto studying Torah (though what a delight that would be), but what is required is nuance when it comes to the portrayal of Jews as complex, individual characters and not simply emotional clichés used to prop up or promote some tired understanding of an entire people as victims.

What it ultimately boils down to is (mis)representation. Dissenters are wont to point out that little if any mention is ever made of the Christian-hood of any of the other X-Men, and while this is true, by dint of our existence in a Christian centric society (within which the X-Men also exist) it is assumed that unless explicitly stated otherwise, all characters are Christian (or straight, etc.). Pointing out Magneto’s heritage matters because his is a background that so often goes unnoticed and unrepresented in mainstream media, but what matters more is how it’s represented. In both of his movie iterations, Nightcrawler’s Catholicism is subtly stated by brief scenes showing him praying, clutching a rosary, or making the sign of the cross. When confronted with overwhelming odds, his religion acts as succor for his soul, a shelter and support, all without being heavy handed.

The sole instance of Magneto speaking to God comes as an anguished crying out as he clutches the dead bodies of his recently murdered wife and child. Though this remains within the vein of traditional Judaism, where questioning God is not only common but oftentimes encouraged, the intent of the scene is most likely not to portray Magneto as a man succumbing to the pressures of the world while wondering aloud why the Almighty would burden him with these hardships. Rather, it only adds flare to the anguish of an already tortured man. Magneto does not overcome, he suffers.

Were this only an instance of poor or unimaginative character development, it would be bad enough, but the insidious truth of the matter is that Magneto is a snapshot of how pop media views the Jew. While there are certainly exceptions that prove the rule, for the most part, Jews are seen as two-dimensional caricatures, only interesting as victims to be saved or avenged. Think of the Jewish children in Au revoir, les enfants, whose impetus in the film is to be befriended by Catholics and yet still carted off to the concentration camps. Or the Bear Jew in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, who, by dint of his ability to actually fight back, must surely be a Golem, a construct of Jewish folklore. But Jews are more than victims and our stories more varied and complex than the narratives of suffering others wish to place upon us. Representation matters to be sure, but how we are represented matters just as much. A cast filled with stereotypes accomplishes little and harms more than it helps.

It’s time Marvel embraces the Jewish heritage of its characters and realizes that a Jew can do more than survive Auschwitz.

Alex Franco is a Georgia-born writer currently geeking out in Paris.

Read also: Hey, Marvel, Where Are Your Jews?

How Superman Stopped Being Jewish, And Why He’s Coming Back

Images: David Yardin and John Byrne for Marvel comics and via Wikimedia

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It makes no sense how Gentile superhero movies have become. The creation of an art form, years of creating coded characters, gradually bringing them out of the woodwork, and for what?

It’s no new complaint that these movies, Marvel ones in particular, have been lacking for Jewish characters, but that might be forgivable if they kept the subtext. But nope, nary a metaphor to be found. Is there any hope for the latest installation, Captain America: Civil War, out this weekend? Probably not.

It’s a shame, because creators of early comic books were almost entirely Jewish. From Superman inventors Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, to Batman creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane (Kahn), to Marvel powerhouses like Stan Lee (Stanley Lieber), Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg), and Joe (Hymie) Simon— immigrants and first generation Americans flocked to an industry that took creativity and talent, but didn’t yet have the establishment to have real rules, or a policy of keeping out minorities.

While most early superheros appeared as white, Gentile men, it’s no great leap over tall buildings in a single bound to get to Jewish subtext as early as the 1930s. These characters sometimes lead double lives, seeking empowerment through super ability in a world in which they never quite fit, often facing discrimination anyway. Just look at Superman, and especially his origins.

But then, something interesting happened. Over the decades, ethnic minority identities became more mainstream in America. Following suit, Marvel characters came out of the Jewish closet: Magneto, after vague allusions throughout the years, confirmed his identity as a Holocaust survivor by the 1980s. The Thing, previously established as based on Jack Kirby’s childhood, admitted his heritage in 2002. Other, new Jewish characters were introduced, such as X-Men’s Kitty Pryde, who debuted in 1980. These folk struggled with supervillains, sure (well, Magneto is complicated), but they also had to deal with anti-Semitism from time to time.

“I am Jewish. I am a mutant,” said Kitty Pryde only a few years ago. “And I want people to know who and what I am. I tell people because, hey, if we’re going to have a problem with it… I’d like to know.”

And of course it’s not only Jews. For just one recent example, the new Ms. Marvel has become a smashing success among readers as a Muslim girl. If comics’ increasing embrace of its Jewish roots and exploration of all-around diversity in the ranks of its characters means that America is ready for ethnic superheroes, you wouldn’t know it from the movies.

To be sure, the movies are improving in some ways, such as slowly introducing more characters of color, including promoting two black sidekicks to prominent positions. The predominance of white men is still troubling, but there are steps in the right direction. But Jews are still conspicuously absent.

An important, if confusing note: different entities own the film rights to different Marvel characters. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, refers to the movies that tie into the Avengers, including, Thor, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and now, Captain America: Civil War.

The MCU movies are the heavyweights of the comic book franchising game; its twelve movies so far (soon to be thirteen,) have grossed a total of $3.5 billion in the box office alone. It is one of the most visible franchises today, and it is here that diversity is perhaps the most important of all. But it is here where Jewish identity is erased the most thoroughly.

The MCU has had ample opportunity to make characters Jewish, that it squandered. Take the first Captain America film, from 2011, alone.

The movie takes place during World War II. In fact, Captain America debuted in comic form in March 1941— before the United States entered the war. “Cap” was a bold, anti-Fascist symbol, representing strength and agency to his Jewish creators while their people were murdered overseas. The most famous image of early Captain America is of him punching Adolf Hitler square in the jaw.

So I sure as heck went to see that movie expecting to see him fighting Nazis— like a PG-13 Inglourious Basterds. Instead, the film quickly traded the Third Reich for Hydra, an organization so evil that its leader (an avid Nazi in the comics) goes rogue and has his own, separate plans for world-domination with generic evil rhetoric devoid of explicit racism. Hydra would come to be a major threat later on in the franchise, but meanwhile, seeing Cap save the day from an invented threat felt like a rip-off. The politics of the MCU can be fraught, and heavy-handed, but surely there was no harm in pitting a major hero against a historical enemy.

In addition, Captain America gains his superpowers from a serum designed by one Abraham Erskine, who has been explicitly Jewish in the comics for decades. Yet, the MCU based Erskine off of his earliest appearances in the comic, emphasizing him as a defector from Germany for moral reasons, rather than suggesting he was one of the persecuted.

The movie also includes a few members of the “Howling Commandos,” a diverse military team from the comics that originally included Isadore “Izzy” Cohen. He does not appear in the film. Captain America managed to drain pretty much all of the Jewishness out of the original story, instead emphasizing the blonde-all American archetype of the titular Captain, making his values of heroism disappointingly generic.

In subsequent MCU films, it turns out that Hydra has infiltrated the U.S. government. One secret collaborator is the (recently deceased) Jewish comedian Garry Shandling as “Senator Stern.” Not only is it, as we say, problematic, to have a Jewish-coded leader as part of a global-political conspiracy, but this is a cabal that came up out of Nazism— that boasted itself as worse and more sinister than the Third Reich.

Avengers: Age of Ultron also added insult to injury.

In the comics, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are sometimes heroes, sometimes villains. Though comic book lore can be inconsistent, on the printed page they are usually the children of Magneto, a Jewish man, and a Romani woman. The MCU had the rights to use the twins as characters, but not their father (the legality gets complicated).

So, when inventing a new backstory for the duo, they threw out the ethnic baby out with the bathwater. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are now from the fictional European country of Sokovia, orphaned at a young age. The incident that took their parents from them leads them to become misguided, anti-American militarist volunteers for Hydra. In this, the characters originally of the origins that would made them most vulnerable to Nazi discrimination are instead active participants in the Nazi-esque organization.

Of course, the MCU has to be different from the comics when separate media necessitate other stories. Besides, each of these individual “errors” can be explained, or overlooked, or perhaps written off as a case of oversensitivity (Lord knows I am sensitive). After all, comic book canon is fluid, and any one character can have a back-story rewritten at the will. But when these films consistently, at every opportunity, eliminate explicit Jewish references, or even undertones, then something is wrong.

One non-MCU series, the X-Men movies, did at least some things right. Magneto kept his Jewish survivor back-story, and even has a fond onscreen (if generic) memory of Chanukah. Then, the most recent film in the series (though there’s another on the way, God help us) took what in the comics was a Holocaust-inspired narrative that featured Kitty as its protagonist. Not only do the movies underplay Kitty in general, and never bother to mention her heritage, the Days of Future Past movie instead prominently featured Wolverine, presumably because Hugh Jackman puts tuchuses in seats.

(Also, the last Fantastic Four movie removed the Thing’s Jewish identity, but it was so bad you could probably count the details it got right on one hand.)

The lack of Jewishness in the comic book movies is two steps back. In 2016, we should be able to see Jewish characters in cinema beyond broad comedy— there’s more to our culture than Seth Rogen!

For most consumers these days, movies are the primary ways they know comic book characters at all. So Jews should look at the strong, complicated, funny, exciting characters current superhero movies have to offer, and see a little bit of ourselves— the inventor of the vast majority of the characters onscreen.

Is that so much to ask?

Image credits: Youtube and Flickr.

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