The Jewish Comic Book Guys
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The Jewish Comic Book Guys Presented at the JCC of Ann Arbor February 25th, 2016 The American comic book industry was, from its inception until modern times, dominated by Jewish publishers, writers and artists. How this came about and what it says both about that industry and about Jewish culture in America is the subject of this presentation. The Early or Platinum Days – As has been the case in many of the fields that I have discussed before, Jews entered the comic book industry through a combination of chance and lack of resistance. There were so many professions that were either closed to Jews or where access was limited through quotas or discrimination that Jews gravitated to those professions that were comparatively open. The Eastern Color Printing Company opened in 1928 as an adjunct to the Waterbury Republican newspaper1. The Eastern handled the full-color publishing duties, which were primarily the printing of the comic strips for the paper, those serials known as the “Sunday funnies”. These included some of the famous comics such as Joe Palooka and Mutt and Jeff. Eastern also printed the color covers for the “racy” magazines known as the pulps. In 1933, the general manager for Eastern was a man named Harry Wildenberg. He took note of the increasing popularity of comics and believed that they could be used as a vehicle to sell advertising. It was about this time that an unemployed Jewish novelty salesman named Maxwell Charles “M.C.” Gaines (formerly Max Ginzberg) joined the company in the sales department2. Whether the idea of a full-color magazine of these same Sunday comic strips originated with Wildenberg or Ginzberg is not clear, but they were able to sell the idea as a promotional opportunity. Thus was Famous Funnies born. Soon A Century of Comics, and Skippy’s Own Book of Comics would follow, the latter being the first modern comic dedicated to a single character. Let me repeat that these were used as promotions, given away for free to promote products. No one believed that children would pay money for the same comic strips that came for free with newspapers. Moreover, with Eastern’s success, competition had sprung up in the form or rival publishers, also offering promotions. In 1935 Harry Donenfield3 would leave behind the pulp “girlie” magazines (where he had been charged with obscenity) to launch his comic book New Fun. We’ll talk more about Harry and how he and his partner Jack Liebowitz would launch Detective Comics. Also on the scene was Martin “Moe” Goodman4 who had several publications of Funnies before 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Color_Printing 2 http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jews-in-comic-books/ 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Donenfeld 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Goodman_(publisher) launching Marvel Comics in 1939. As the popularity of comic books grew, an industry sprang up to meet the demand. The growing comic book business created opportunities for many young Jewish writers and illustrators who had been shut out or more traditional avenues such as the advertising business. Ad agencies had quotas restricting the number of Jewish employees that they would take on. Sometimes newspapers would hire Jewish cartoonists such as Rube Goldberg5 or Milt Gross6 but these were the exception. In Rube Goldberg’s case, the fact that his father was a San Francisco fire and police commissioner helped him get his first job at the San Francisco Chronicle before moving to New York to work at the Evening Mail. For Milt Gross, who came from the Bronx, he was able to capitalize on his Jewish immigrant roots, writing stories in an idiom that combined Yiddish and English into Ying-lish as in a "Nize Ferry-tail from Elledin witt de Wanderful Lemp" or "Jack witt de Binn Stuck". But again, it was far more likely that young Jewish cartoonists could find work in the new world of comic books than in the newspaper business. At least that was how it seemed to two students attending De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 19367. Young Bob Kane (who would go on to create Batman) suggested to his friend Will Eisner that he, Eisner, should try to sell his work to a new comic book called Wow, What A Magazine! Jerry Iger8, the son of an Austrian peddler and himself a cartoonist who had apprenticed under Max Fleischer of Betty Boop fame, had become the founding editor of Wow and accepted Eisner’s submission, an adventure strip entitled Captain Scott Dalton. Wow only lasted four issues from July to November 1936 (skipping October due to a lack of funds) but Eisner contributed several strips in addition to the Scott Dalton strip, including one about a pirate known as “The Flame” and a secret agent “Harry Karry.” In only a few short years, from 1933 to 1936, comic books had gone from reprinting Sunday funnies to featuring original works of adventure fiction, often written by young, urban Jewish creators. But the art form was about to take a giant step that would capture the public’s imagination. And the inspiration for that would come from a most unlikely source. Man and Superman – Inspiration can come from positive or negative influences. In this case the thing that took comic books to the next level was the most negative possible. In 1883, Friedrich Nietzche wrote in the prologue to his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra) – The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth! I entreat you my brethren, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of supra- terrestrial hopes! … Behold, I teach you the Übermensch: he is this lightning, he is this madness! … 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milt_Gross 7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Eisner 8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Iger Behold, I am a prophet of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud: but this lightning is called Übermensch.9 Nietzsche was himself adamantly opposed to anti- Semitism (he once declared that “all anti-Semites ought to be shot”10) by 1934 his writings had been subverted to fit the Nazi philosophy and the Ubermensch (translated as Superman by G.B. Shaw in his play Man and Superman11) had become the paragon of the Third Reich. Hitler believed that the German soldier was an Ubermensch, a Superman, destined to conquer the world. And that others, Hitler receiving Nietzsche's favorite walking stick from Nietsche’s Jews in particular, were inferior beings, fit only for sister, Lisbeth. http://www.f-nietzsche.de/efn.htm service or worse. Two young Jewish boys from Cleveland disagreed. Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster had broken into the comic business with a strip for New Fun about a musketeer-type character called “Henri Duval.12” They would follow this with a strip about a crime-fighter with magical powers called “Doctor Occult.” Siegel authored a story about a villain with mind-reading powers bent on world conquest entitled The Reign of the Superman, which appeared in the magazine Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization. In this story, the Superman was evil. A mad scientist, Professor Ernest Smalley, entices Bill Dunn, a vagrant, to participate in an experiment in exchange for a meal and a change of clothing. The professor gives Dunn a potion that conveys telepathic powers, but also a mad lust for power. Dunn kills the professor, only to find that the potion wears off. We are left with the implication that Dunn returns to poverty. Siegel would subsequently rewrite the story. Now the Superman was a hero, a private detective. But the story still didn’t catch on. Five years would go by. One day Siegel happened to see a comic book about Detective Dan. Getting his friend Joe Schuster to do the illustrations, they created a comic book about The Superman. And….it still didn’t sell. Siegel became so frustrated that he burned all the pages; only the cover survived because Siegel rescued it. The pair had success creating the character of Slam Bradley for Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics was a joint venture between entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, publisher of Fun comics 9 https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/Nietzsches_Ubermensch_A_Hero_of_Our_Time 10 http://www.jta.org/1934/11/01/archive/all-anti-semites-ought-to-be-shot-nietzsche-once-wrote 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Superman 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Siegel and Harry Donenfield and his partner Jack Liebowitz. Wheeler-Nicholson was in financial trouble and would be forced out of the company after one year. It would take some time, but Detective Comics would go on to become DC Comics, one of the most valuable brand names not just in the comics industry, but in the world of entertainment. In June of 1938, Superman would finally receive his just due. He would grace the cover of Action Comics #1. Despite what we know now about Superman’s eventual popularity, the Man of Steel would share space with a number of other stories: "Chuck Dawson: The 4-G Gang (Part 1)", "The Mystery of the Freight Train Robberies", "South Sea Strategy (Part I)", "Sticky-Mitt Stimson", "The Adventures of Marco Polo (Part I)", "The Light Heavyweight Championship", "The International Jewel Thief" and "Murder in England"13. Something for everyone. Despite having to share space with a number of other stories, Superman would go on to become the most successful comic book hero of all time, ushering in the Golden Age of Comics and giving rise to a merchandise empire that would include multiple comic book versions, toys, movies and TV shows.