Books: Drawn to It

Ever since the world of comics became an acceptable subject for scholarly works, the topic has received a seemingly disproportionate amount of ink.

Tasked with penning a review of Danny Fingeroth’s Superman Disguised as Clark Kent—an exploration into the Jewish origins of superheroes—some months back, I was struck on several occasions with an intense feeling of déjà vu.

It’s a fascinating story to be sure, an industry of caped superheroes born out of the low-income tenement buildings of the Lower East Side. Fingeroth, himself a veteran of the Marvel bullpen, naturally opted to approach the topic of Jews and comics from that very angle, focusing on the likes of Siegel, Shuster, Gil Kane, Will Eisner and, of course, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.

Paul Buhle—whose new book, Jews and American Comics, is out this week—graduated from a very different school of comic-book appreciation. Now a professor at Brown University, the author counts some of the medium’s best-loved underground pioneers among his peers and friends. His true roots with the medium, however, began earlier: appropriately with that primordial soup of mid-1950s countercultural leanings and liberal sentiments, Mad comics, helmed by the posthumously revered Harvey Kurtzman.

“When it became Mad Magazine, it wasn’t as good, but it was still sort of Jewish, liberal New York reaching out to me, in the middle of Illinois, which was appreciated,” said Buhle, describing his descent into the form. “I wrote a high school paper as a junior about Harvey Kurtzman. I got a ‘B’ from a teacher who liked me, but always thought that comics were degraded, as almost everyone thought.”

That Mad was the true catalyst for Buhle’s love affair with the art form is made clear in Jews and American Comics. In the first chapter, Buhle dutifully touches on the genesis of the American Jew’s involvement with the medium, discussing the phenomenon of Yiddish language comics and briefly invoking the names of such newspaper-strip pioneers as Al Capp and Rube Goldberg. This introduction feels a bit rushed, however, as if even Buhle himself just can’t wait for the good stuff.

Even more rushed is the obligatory chapter on superheroes. It’s a subject that, in Buhle’s defense, has been rather well explored—particularly in light of the success of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-winning period piece The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which borrowed liberally from Siegel and Shuster’s creation of that caped marvel from Metropolis.

“I really stopped reading superheroes when I was about 12. I was a little too old to start reading Marvel in the ’60s. I didn’t take to them. I didn’t think that they represented a new phase of art,” explained Buhle when asked why he opted not to devote more page real estate to the matter. “I feel that the world of underground comics is so much my generation. There are so many people among them who are very good friends of mine, including Crumb and Bill Griffith—the only one who could make it into the dailies—that these are the ones that my heart went to. Plus those people in mainstream get $300 a page, and they don’t even have to ink. They have health plans, unlike my pals who have none of those things and are scraping along…I feel like I’m their champion.”

Buhle hits his stride during the chapter entitled “Comic Book Heroes,” when a discussion of the titular subjects quickly gives way to the topic of the pre-censorship horror books from EC Comics, and ultimately its direct descendent, Mad.

A loving homage to Kurtzman, Al Feldstein and his ilk—as in real life—ultimately paved the way the truly countercultural works of underground comics, beginning with honorary Jew Robert Crumb. Buhle has equal love for peers like Harvey Pekar, Kim Deitch and the future Mrs. Crumb, Aline Kominsky. The true star of the book, however, if one need be singled out, is none of the above: but rather that poster boy for the movement toward the acceptance of comics as academic fodder. “If the breakthrough to formal acceptance bears on unmistakably Jewish name,” Buhle wrote in the final chapter, “that name surely is Art Spiegelman.”

That Buhle assigns that chapter, largely about the acceptance of the Jewish identity in the form, the name “Recovering Jewishness” (as if it were the final step of a religious AA program) is somehow fitting in an industry that despite its own inclusion of Jewish artists, largely saw the names of its creations and creators changed—erasing any trace of identity.

Also fitting is that the most powerful aspect of Jews and American Comics is not Buhle’s writing, but rather his selection of work from some of the medium’s most notable creators, which often paints a more complete cross-section of the subject matter than his sometimes-rushed text. Buhle’s discussion is at its best when the author is describing an aspect of the subject he is clearly passionate about. The passion of the artists whose work is included as supplemental material, however, never has a moment to stop shining.