Super Heroes and Schlemiels: Jews and Comic Art
1. Lazarus Dobelsky
Melbourne comic book devotee, former Fanzine editor and Special Counsel
DLA Phillips Fox, Lazarus Dobelsky is contributing material from his own personal collection to the exhibition.
“The Jews who had escaped the pogroms of Europe in the late 1800s came to America to give their children an opportunity for a better life. For most, that opportunity was to be cruelly denied by a crushing poverty and inherent racism which bubbled under the veneer of American society. It may not have been a crime, as cartoonist Al Capp said, to be a Jew in America, but it was no great compliment either.
In Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s fantasy, the alien Superman was admired by the masses and in his assimilated persona of Clark Kent had a decent job working for a great metropolitan newspaper. In real life, even those immigrants who managed to assimilate discovered that decent jobs were hard to come by. Many turned to entertainment, or crime, where there was a more level playing field for minorities. Jews gravitated towards the movie, music and printing businesses. It’s probably no accident that it was an unemployed Jewish school teacher, Max Gaines, forced to work as an agent for a printing company, who had the novel idea of folding the comic strip section of a newspaper once, then once again, and in the process invented the modern comic book. “Jewish Museum of Australia, 17/2/09
…”for immigrant Jews in the 1930s, “normal” jobs were hard to come by. When most of these people started, they struggled to get into the WASP-ish advertising agencies, but they had to earn a living somehow and working on comic books was about as good as they could get at the time”.
Australian Jewish News 25/7/08, p.6
“It does beggar belief that in the early days about 70% of the industry was Jewish.” Australian Jewish News 25/7/08, p.6
“Jews have a vast treasure trove of legends that are passed on to us by our parents and our culture. Also, it’s undeniable that as a Jew you like to tell stories.” Australian Jewish News 25/7/08, p.6
2. David Blumenstein – contributing his own works to the exhibition
David Blumenstein is a cartoonist living in Melbourne. He has been self-publishing Nakedfella Comics since 2000 and is a reluctant organiser of comics-related events around Australia, the most recent being a series of events at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival called “Comic Book Funny”.
David works as an animator and storyboard artist. His best known work is probably his animated opener for Channel Ten’s The Panel, but he has worked on a variety of animated projects recently, including music videos, some kiddie cartoon series and a pilot for his own adult cartoon series, The Precinct.
David loves cop movies.
3. Bernard Caleo – contributing his own works to the exhibition
Proprietor of Cardigan Comics, a Melbourne-based publisher of Australian comic books. Currently they publish the online ongoing book comic ‘I Knew Him’, by Bernard Caleo.
Website: www.cardigancomics.com
Blog: www.anislandart.blogspot.com
4. Andrew Weldon – contributing his own works to the exhibition
Since completing an architecture degree in 1995 Andrew Weldon has been a regular contributor of cartoons and illustrations to many major newspapers and magazines. His cartoon ‘The Strip’ appears weekly The Sunday Age, and his work appears regularly in The Age. He has been the cartoonist for The Big Issue since its inception in 1996, and has been a regular contributor to The Chaser newspaper, books and website since 2001. In recent times his work has also appeared regularly in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin, Titanic (Germany’s leading satirical magazine) and on The Ink Group greeting cards and calendars. His work has also appeared in The Weekend Australian Magazine, Private Eye (UK), The Spectator (UK), Punch (UK), and Might (US), and The New Yorker.
He has written and illustrated two children’s books The Kid With The Amazing Head (1998) and Clever Trevor’s Stupendous Inventions (1999) as well as illustrating several other books, including The Reading Bug by Paul Jennings (2003), a top ten non-fiction bestseller, and Written In Blood by Beverley MacDonald (2003), a CBC Notable Australian Children’s Book 2004.
He lives in Melbourne and he smells funny.
5. Dr Helen Light AM – Director Jewish Museum of Australia
“The Jewish Museum of Australia is thrilled to present this exciting fun filled and challenging exhibition. This exhibition traces the changing but predominant role of Jews in comic art throughout the 20th C. – in strip newspaper comics, in popular superheroes comics, countercultural comic magazines and graphic novels.
This exhibition brings together the work of such diverse luminaries as Milt Gross, Shuster and Siegel (Superman), Stan Lee, Bob Kane, Will Eisner (The Spirit) Harvey Kurtzman (Mad), Aline Kominsky-Crumb; Harvey Pekar (American Splendour); Art Spiegelman (Maus) and Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat). I hope visitors will be as delighted and provoked as I have been by the imaginative artistry of these clever comic creators who have used a huge variety of combinations of word and images to explore moral, political, fantastical, identity and counter cultural issues.”
Section 1 | Forgotten Ghetto: From the Shtetl to the Devouring Metropolis | 1914 – 1930
The first section focuses on works created and published in the first half of the 20th century. Jewish artists who had grown up in immigrant families on the Lower East Side, in Brooklyn and the Bronx used graphic narration to depict their environment, families and daily lives, and to give their characters a realistic setting. In the first comic strips, published in Yiddish or English newspapers the authors showed their profound concern for the challenges and trials Jewish immigrants had to face in the course of their social and cultural integration into American society. They created a vision of the Jewish immigrant in transition, between the Yiddish mother tongue and the English language – the eponymous character of Harry Herschfield’s strip Abie the Agent speaks with a heavy Yiddish accent. Since the first rule of the comic strip is that the reader has to be entertained and amused, they frequently depicted characters driven by a will to succeed socially but also by impassioned political involvement in American democratic and national life. So these characters often appear congenial and comical.
Section 2 | This is a Job for Superman: Vigilantes and Superheroes | 1942 – 1979
The second section is dedicated to the phenomenon of the superheroes. Since integration was underway, comic authors now turned to creating superheroes with national traits. Jewish authors were well-represented: Joe Shuster & Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert. Their heroes and superheroes, although they might fulfil or incorporate the traditional Jewish dream of self-defence and autonomy, are devoid of distinctive signs of ethnic or religious identity. They are loyal only to the universal value of good against evil and the defence of mankind.
Section 3 | Will Eisner | 1976 – 2005
The third section is dedicated to Will Eisner’s works from 1976 to 2005. After the huge success of his masked detective hero, Will Eisner pioneered a giant step in the world of comics by developing a new genre: the graphic novel. In A Contract with God, and pursuing this experience in other works, he developed a vision and a collective memory of the Jewish past and more specifically of the culture and way of life of the Jewish immigrants and their individual and integration into American society.
Section 4 | Memory Transmitters | Post WWII
With time and successive generations, authors ceased to describe the Jewish world they once know or their daily reality. They pictured a bygone world as they remembered it but also the vision of it they received from former tales. Literature, theatre and movies were also leaving their mark on the visions of those who had no direct experience of this world. They eagerly sought out traces and documents, vestiges of this past and the changes in urban areas and buildings in immigrants’ quarters, old photographs and commercial leaflets depicting workshops, shops and delicatessens. They delved into the history of these changes, digging out every available trace of the epos of self-made men, their languages and cultural backgrounds. Eventually, these sons of immigrants recalled the life story of their fathers to root out their own political convictions. In doing so, they constructed a narration associating the collective memory of former generations and their own contemporary questioning of the problems of their own generations.
With their sentiment of having achieved integration and sense of passing time, Jewish authors began recollecting personal and family traumas. Art Spiegelman’s Maus is the paradigm for the graphic narration of the Holocaust but also tells the generation gap and misunderstandings between survivors and their children.
This new self-examination of the post-war generation in the American political context is acutely expressed in Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD Magazine.
Section 5: Contemporary Authors in Europe
The fifth section, dedicated to contemporary authors in Europe (France and Italy), deals with Jewish history from the turn of the Century to the 1950’s: Gotlib and Goscinny, Hugo Pratt’s fascination and personal memories blended into the romantic biography of Corto Maltese, Vittorio Giardino’s detective stories Jonas Fink and Max Fridman and Zentner & Pellejero‘s Le Silence de Malka (Malka’s Silence) and Joan Sfar’s Le Chat du rabbin (Rabbi’s cat , five volumes), Kletzmer, and Pascin.
Section 6: In-Focus | Contemporary Authors in Australia
Featuring some of Australia’s iconic comic authors, David Blumenstein, Nicki Greenberg, John Kron and Andrew Weldon.
Section 1 | Forgotten Ghetto: From the Shtetl to the Devouring Metropolis | 1914 – 1930
The first section focuses on works created and published in the first half of the 20th century. Jewish artists who had grown up in immigrant families on the Lower East Side, in Brooklyn and the Bronx used graphic narration to depict their environment, families and daily lives, and to give their characters a realistic setting. In the first comic strips, published in Yiddish or English newspapers the authors showed their profound concern for the challenges and trials Jewish immigrants had to face in the course of their social and cultural integration into American society. They created a vision of the Jewish immigrant in transition, between the Yiddish mother tongue and the English language – the eponymous character of Harry Herschfield’s strip Abie the Agent speaks with a heavy Yiddish accent. Since the first rule of the comic strip is that the reader has to be entertained and amused, they frequently depicted characters driven by a will to succeed socially but also by impassioned political involvement in American democratic and national life. So these characters often appear congenial and comical.
Section 2 | This is a Job for Superman: Vigilantes and Superheroes | 1942 – 1979
The second section is dedicated to the phenomenon of the superheroes. Since integration was underway, comic authors now turned to creating superheroes with national traits. Jewish authors were well-represented: Joe Shuster & Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert. Their heroes and superheroes, although they might fulfil or incorporate the traditional Jewish dream of self-defence and autonomy, are devoid of distinctive signs of ethnic or religious identity. They are loyal only to the universal value of good against evil and the defence of mankind.
Section 3 | Will Eisner | 1976 – 2005
The third section is dedicated to Will Eisner’s works from 1976 to 2005. After the huge success of his masked detective hero, Will Eisner pioneered a giant step in the world of comics by developing a new genre: the graphic novel. In A Contract with God, and pursuing this experience in other works, he developed a vision and a collective memory of the Jewish past and more specifically of the culture and way of life of the Jewish immigrants and their individual and integration into American society.
Section 4 | Memory Transmitters | Post WWII
With time and successive generations, authors ceased to describe the Jewish world they once know or their daily reality. They pictured a bygone world as they remembered it but also the vision of it they received from former tales. Literature, theatre and movies were also leaving their mark on the visions of those who had no direct experience of this world. They eagerly sought out traces and documents, vestiges of this past and the changes in urban areas and buildings in immigrants’ quarters, old photographs and commercial leaflets depicting workshops, shops and delicatessens. They delved into the history of these changes, digging out every available trace of the epos of self-made men, their languages and cultural backgrounds. Eventually, these sons of immigrants recalled the life story of their fathers to root out their own political convictions. In doing so, they constructed a narration associating the collective memory of former generations and their own contemporary questioning of the problems of their own generations.
With their sentiment of having achieved integration and sense of passing time, Jewish authors began recollecting personal and family traumas. Art Spiegelman’s Maus is the paradigm for the graphic narration of the Holocaust but also tells the generation gap and misunderstandings between survivors and their children.
This new self-examination of the post-war generation in the American political context is acutely expressed in Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD Magazine.
Section 5: Contemporary Authors in Europe
The fifth section, dedicated to contemporary authors in Europe (France and Italy), deals with Jewish history from the turn of the Century to the 1950’s: Gotlib and Goscinny, Hugo Pratt’s fascination and personal memories blended into the romantic biography of Corto Maltese, Vittorio Giardino’s detective stories Jonas Fink and Max Fridman and Zentner & Pellejero‘s Le Silence de Malka (Malka’s Silence) and Joan Sfar’s Le Chat du rabbin (Rabbi’s cat , five volumes), Kletzmer, and Pascin.
Section 6: In-Focus | Contemporary Authors in Australia
Featuring some of Australia’s iconic comic authors, David Blumenstein, Nicki Greenberg, John Kron and Andrew Weldon.
Click here to see examples of the art
