Scarcely a reader of this on-line column will be a stranger to the name of Harvey Pekar. Those old and stay-up-late enough to have caught Harvey on the Late Show with David Letterman remember the host more anxious about controversy than he is these days, but Harvey much the same, fearless, outspoken, cranky even but delightful. Likewise, if no one gets portrayed honestly in film, outside of documentaries (even here, accuracy is questionable), the award-winning American Splendor of 2003 must be the exception because Paul Giamatti was close to the real character, and we got to see Harvey in the flesh (as well as an animated version) for the sake of comparisons.

In short, he's a poissunality, in the yinglish phrase, and emphatically also a mensch. If the late Yiddish teacher-editor-scholar Itche Goldberg once complained that I.J. Singer's anti-humanism broke with Yiddish tradition, Harvey's humanism is securely within that tradition. Sholem Aleichem and many others less remembered would recognize him as a fellow toiler in the fields of real Jewish culture.

In recent years, Harvey has turned from the self-explanatory mode of the American Splendor comic series, toward wider subjects, not always Jewish by any means. (Reviewer's disclosure: several of the historical volumes have been in collaboration with me.) He may be the only comic scripter on the planet who can take any book and break it down into a lucid story line, without any particular need for superheroes, melodrama or any of the other clichés that have haunted the foremost figures of comic art. Like Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, James Sturm, Seth Tobocman, Peter Kuper, Sharon Rudahl, Sabrina Jones or Lance Tooks-to mention only a handful of the artists who seem staggeringly brilliant to me-Harvey finds something that comics seemed to lack for generations. But he's also special because he is the model of what the writer would be when comics grow up fully.

I am not sure that Harvey Pekar: Conversations captures nearly all of this story, but I do not blame the editor or interviewers. Harvey exudes an intuitive modesty even when he is rightly proud of accomplishments. That may relate to Harvey never having left Cleveland for the bright lights of New York or the California sun, and the unending effort just to make a living. But I think it is part of being close to his parents' world after all, the unfamous, struggling Jews with socialistic instincts, sensitive to the sufferings and anxieties of others.

What the volume does capture, however, is precious stuff, and valuable to anyone who wants to follow Harvey's work closely. In exchanges that stretch from 1984 to 2007, interviewers ask the good questions, from Harvey's family background, his career wage-labor at the Veteran Administration hospital, and his early connections with Robert Crumb to the Letterman episodes, his cancer (and the book that came out of it, Our Cancer Year, co-scripted by Joyce Brabner), his views of assorted comic artists and the state of the comic business, his taste in literature and his unfulfilled aspirations. Of special interest, raised by several interviewers but most keenly by Brian Heater, is his work process: how he divides sheets of paper into panels and constructs a story-board of sorts, with stick figures and dialogue, for the artist to fill out. His genius is still a mystery (even to him) and likely to remain so, but we can get closer to it by reading carefully about his work.

The role of collaborators in this book is also fascinating and valuable to examine. Wife Joyce Brabner is very much on hand here, in several interviews over the decades, relating things about his work (and her own) that show us near-photographic images of the writer at work. Joe Zabel, frequently an artist for Harvey, is also on hand several times, and they engage in a dialogue that replicates, in some ways, the ways they must have discussed how they were putting their work together.

The detail, in short, is thick, and every Pekar enthusiast will find something of intense interest that no other reader, let alone a reviewer, will feel identically about. For this reviewer, Harvey reached inward for his 2006 volume The Quitter, drawn wonderfully by Dean Haspiel, an intensely autobiographical journey through adolescent experiences and bitter disappointments (dropping out of college, foremost), a book that tells us so much that we wince for Harvey as we read it. His discussion of this book is more than useful although definitely useful, and in a different way, so is his discussion of a book never destined to be a big seller, Macedonia, intended with a single purpose to show that not all conflicts even in conflicted regions of the world needs to lead to bloodshed. The worst can be avoided.

Ask for utopia or utopianism and you won't find it here, or in any of Harvey's work. Ask for realism, pathos and humanism and you will find all you are looking for. This is a book to read and read again.

It was after thirty years of thinking of myself a semi-scholarly critic of Jewish American comic art, and fifty-plus years since I discovered Mad Comics to be the soul of my childish literary pleasures, that I came across the work and world of Sammy Harkham. There's a good reason for this late discovery: he is so young! Not yet pushing thirty, Harkham already has launched Kramer's Ergot, a premier comics anthology.

The Cover of Sammy's book "Crickets." Kramer's Ergot is "only" an annual, but an extravagant annual with no compromises of any kind to the history of comic art or any other art, nor to politics, nor (and this may be an important point for a former yeshiva bokher still interested in the Torah) to anyone's interpretation of Jewishness. His drawing fills a small minority of the pages because, obviously, he wants to offer as much variety as he can.

He is thus building comic art in his own fashion. Looking back-though not so far back as the original Mad--I see only Arcade (1975-77), edited by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, and Raw (1980-91), edited by Spiegelman with Francois Mouly, as occupying such a high creative space. This is not to demean Zap, Weirdo (mostly Robert Crumb's Nineties mag), Comix Book, Blab or another zine that Harkham edits occasionally, Drawn & Quarterly Showcase. Or the Best American Comics series with two annual numbers so far, edited by Anne Elizabeth Moore. Each has an honorable and proudly weird place of its own.

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Her turn: Kitty dodges deathWhew. Today a bullet was dodged. Literally. Kitty Pryde -- the Magen Dovid–toting, mutant-powered, Jewgirl X-Men - didn't die, as feared, in today's Astonishing X-Men conclusion. Around the world (or maybe only around me) you could hear sighs of relief.

Joss Whedon, the auteur behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, started writing Astonishing X-Men in 2004 with artist John Cassaday. The series was hailed for being exciting, well-written, and beautiful when other X-comics were frankly sub-par. Among the most praised aspects of Whedon's run was his take on Kitty Pryde. When she was first created by John Byrne in 1980 (first appearance Uncanny X-Men #129), she was the comic's precocious child star -- the Wesley to Wolverine's Commander Riker. She called Professor Xavier a jerk, she timejumped to apocalyptic, Holocaust-esque futures, and in a memorable Christmas issue (Uncanny #143), she was left home alone during the holiday while her gentile teammates visited family. She faces off against a demon and beats him just in time celebrate Channukah. Whedon, who claimed Kitty was always the inspiration for Buffy, took Byrne's Bat Mitzvah girl and made her an adult.

So why the concern? Since December 2006, Whedon has been teasing that during his last epic storyline on Astonishing X-Men, one of the X-Men wouldn't be coming home. When Kitty got busy with ex-Soviet teammate Colossus on the planet Breakworld, her fate seemed all but sealed. After all, you don't have to read Carol J. Clover's "Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film" to know that when the girl gives it up, she tends not to make it. Some of us hoped that Whedon wouldn't embrace such a cliché, but when the last issue ended in a definite "Kitty in danger" cliffhanger -- the Jewess trapped in a hollow bullet being shot to Earth -- it seemed like we knew who wasn't coming home. Then we got to wait four months (four months full of hints in other, related comics that Kitty was going to die) to see whether it was true.

Youth Pryde: Kitty in 1983I'm not sure what the statistics are on Jewish comic book fanboy and fangirls, But it remains that despite the plethora of Jewish comic book writers (Simcha Weinstein's Up, Up, and Oy Vey! described the Jewish influences on the superhero industry) there is a serious dearth of Jewish comic book characters. For those of us that grew up looking to identify with a coreligionist in the pages of our floppy X-purchases, Kitty Pryde was basically it. (I don't know anyone who choose to identity with that other Jewish X-character, Holocaust survivor/villain Magneto.)

My fear about Kitty biting the bullet wasn't just a concern that a favorite character would die, but the fear that her Mogen Dovid necklace wouldn't show up again in comics for some time.Comic book characters are known for coming back from the dead (after all, Whedon himself revived Colossus), but their deaths can last years until an enterprising author decides to revive them. And with comic books' emphasis on being more and more "adult" and "realistic," who knows when the next resurrection is going to be approved?

Kitty's fate may be left in limbo for now (she doesn't die, but she's still in a precarious situation), but at least she could show up any week now, in the hands of any author (the capable Warren Ellis is taking over Astonishing X-Men from Whedon). Saving her from a bullet is much easier than bringing her back from the afterlife.

I'm twenty-four today (Thanks for the birthday gift, Whedon!) and probably too old to be worrying about the survival of comic book characters. But when I have children, I'd like there to be a Member of the Tribe around when they start reading comic books. It's not just about being represented on the glossy pages, but about being able to identify with the characters you read. Jewish characters are rare enough, but a strong, funny, female Jewish X-Men? It's a perfect storm.

Now if only we could get DC Comics to revive their Israeli supercommando superhero team Hayoth, we'd be in business.

Jewcy’s comic artist turns his gimlet eye away from the Jewish people and towards their detractors.

As Britian’s former European minister noted in The Washington Post this fall, antisemitism is on the rise in the UK. Jews are four times more likely than Muslims to be attacked because of their religion, according to a widely circulated article in City Journal, and hate crimes against Jews have doubled since 2001.

Below, Eli Valley imagines what happens when this trend hits the schools.

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Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics and the Creation of the Superhero BooksI went into Disguised As Clark Kent thinking it would be about the same book as Up, Up And Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero by Simcha Weinstein (Oy Vey is jokier and with more Biblical parallels tossed in), but, despite having nearly the same title and subject, Disguised, I have to admit, is really the leader on the topic with greater contemporary historical detail and wonderful captured social and emotional subtleties. At least in my humble little opinion, it seems to be about Jews first, particularly the immigrant Jewish psyche, and comics we drew second.

A large number of the creators of the most famous superheroes were of Jewish background, secular, religious, or both. Disguised as Clark Kent explores how the Jewish consciousness of these individuals impacted the content of the comics and contributed to making characters such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman into the most familiar popular-culture icons of all time... Fingeroth... reflects on the phenomenon of the heavily Jewish elements that, consciously or not, went into the creation of the superhero.

Well-researched, filled with interesting history and interviews, Disguised As Clark Kent:

centers on questions of Jewish identity, which is historically about the push and pull toward and away from that very identity. One sees this immediately and most famously in Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the superhero "disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." It is also a large part of Bill Finger and Bob Kane's Batman, Will Eisner's Spirit, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Captain America.

Disguised As Clark Kent was released this fall by Continuum International Publishing Group and is available on Amazon, Alibris, Powell's and the like.

 

This summer’s superhero movies have been godawful, but the next Batman sequel doesn’t come out until July 2008. Luckily, Eli Valley dreamed up a preview. Get your popcorn ready, then click the thumbnail below. CLICK TO ENLARGE  

That's what my mom tells me: The sick-fuck genius of Mr. Wiggles
It’s probably somewhere along the lines of confessing to a social disease to love Mr. Wiggles, but god, I do anyway. Mr. Wiggles is an adorable, fuzzy teddy bear, who love molestation, ultra-violence, and crack. He’s also the brainchild of cartoonist Neil Swaab.

Swaab started his comic strip, Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles, while studying art at Syracuse. He landed a spot in the New York Press shortly before moving to the city. For the next several years, Wiggles reigned supreme on the Press’s pages. Over coffee, Swaab told me that, not liking NYC, he tried his best to ruin his good name. Instead he made his career.

The same editor who hired me at the Press gave Swaab the boot, but Wiggles continues to spread havoc in newspapers across the country, staring in two books in the process.

No Roof Means all Skylight: Dorothy Gambrell's Cat and GirlDorothy Gambrell's Cat and Girl is one of the smartest, most smart-aleck web comics around. Her latest strip sums up the plight of the self-employeed and financially responsible.

Ms. Gambrell is now ignoring the rat race and travelling around Outer Mongolia. God bless her.

As the Sabbath is upon us, you can catch up on this week's parsha, in over-simplified, raunchy toon form at The Comic Torah.

And for a sneak peak interpretation:

Joseph's brothers did not sell him into slavery. Judah suggested it, but no one agreed. The bros, violent knuckleheads that they were, threw Joseph down a dry well, then ate lunch. Can you blame them? Between his pompous dreams and Jacob's favoritism, we'd have hated Joseph too! This parsha also tells another story. In it Judah thinks he's sleeping with a prostitute, but is really boinking (and impregnating) his daughter-in-law, Tamar.

Sam Harris sends us this cartoon. As I suggested in a faithhacker post, atheists around the web are joyously shouting from the desktops that Harris scalped Dennis Prager in their Jewcy debate. Prager is known for being deadly formidable in debate, so the atheists are extra giddy about this one. One of Harris's fans was so overjoyed that he drew this for Sam.

Take That, Prager: Atheists rejoice