Category Archives: contributors

contributors, controversy

Questioning Frank Miller and Superman’s “Jewish Essence”

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I have been asked to comment on a short piece that was published yesterday on CBR.com, which I have to agree calls out for a response and fact-check. The piece announced that Frank Miller has said in an New York Comic-Con interview that he wants to “tackle one of the oldest, but oft overlooked, origin stories in the entire industry: Superman’s Jewish heritage.” The article then goes on to make a few questionable claims, many of which I have seen before, in my research on Superman and the so-called “Jewish-comics connection.” This notion holds that Superman, and – depending on who you read – the superhero genre, the US comics industry, or the comics medium itself, were created by Jews and has a sort of “Jewish essence.”

Let us return to the quoted line about Superman’s supposed, but “oft overlooked” origin story and Jewish heritage. It does not take much effort to poke a hole in the claim that this is an overlooked topic. In the past ten years alone, numerous books have been published that have this issue as their central focus: in 2006, Rabbi Simcha Weinstein published Up, Up, and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero; in 2007, comics writer and writing teacher Danny Fingeroth published Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero; in 2008 comedian and journalist Arie Kaplan published From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books; and in 2012 masculinity scholar Harry Brod published Superman is Jewish? How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth Justice, and the Jewish-American Way. On top of this, there are several other books about Superman or Jews and comics more generally, as well as innumerable newspaper and online articles, in which claims about Superman’s “Jewish origins” are similarly made. Let us also not forget that what Miller proposes has already been done; in 1998, for Superman’s 60th anniversary, DC put out a series of Man of Steel comic books in which the superhero traveled back in time to face the Nazis and in which Siegel and Shuster’s Jewish heritage got a nod.

As entertaining and interesting reading as the books and articles mentioned may provide, they suffer from a lack of support for their arguments, and rely mostly on recycling the same tropes and claims in a sort of internal feedback loop. This has led to a collection of common assumptions about what Superman “is,” based on nothing but the fact that his creators were Jewish. But once you shine a light on these claims, they start to fall apart. I will not go into a more general charting of these books or their claims here – for that, you can check out my forthcoming book on the subject or this post on my old, now-defunct blog – but will focus only on the latest article.

Continue reading Questioning Frank Miller and Superman’s “Jewish Essence” →

academic, contributors

Martin Lund Reconstructs Superman’s Judaism

Superman puzzleThis Fall, Palgrave Pivot is releasing Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection by S&S’s own Martin Lund. The super-sized title only hints at the herculean task Lund has taken on: To objectively explore the Judaic origins to the Last Son of Krypton’s publications, too often a site of distortion an mythicism. Rather than discard Superman’s Jewishness wholly, Lund “offers a new understanding of the Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the mid-1930s, presenting him as an authentically Jewish American character in his own time, for good and ill.”

The book is due out this October and is available now for preorder. It is the second title in Palgrave Pivot’s “Contemporary Religion and Popular Culture” series.

articles and essays, contributors, online

Cloning Enchantment: Jesuses After Climate Change

[This article first appeared in the Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing, vol 8, no. 3. It is reproduced here with permission.]

Elizabeth Rae Coody
Elizabeth Rae Coody (PhD) is a biblical scholar with a professional interest in comic books. She is the Director of the Writing Lab and adjunct faculty for the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.

When I found one comic with a Jesus that scientists had cloned from relics, I chuckled at its clever premise. When I found the third Jesus Clone comic, I realized that something had to be going on. As a biblical scholar with professional interests in comics, I had come upon one of those ideas that will not let me go.[1]

I find that Jesus Clone reflects an anxiety about human control and biblical promises in a underexplored corner of U.S. popular culture. There are other thinkers who linger over questions about the worth of popular culture and comics in addressing such ideas, but I am convinced that these comics, and others like them, offer insight into how people conceive of and combine elements from science, religion, and imagination to make sense of our world. These comics bring emotion and narrative to our effort to sort our identity as a species.

Human beings are having a geological effect on the planet we inhabit.[2] Once we allow ourselves to conceive of our role in climate change, we humans have to make sense of the control we have on the planet. Control that was once seen as solely divine is all too human, often with stomach-churning consequences. We have agency, but what have we done with it? What’s there to do when science pronounces planetary doom and religion is seen to falter when asked to answer? Why, combine the two! Bring the Second Coming with Science!
Continue reading Cloning Enchantment: Jesuses After Climate Change →

contributors, interviews

The Martian Chronicles of Julian Darius, Part III

MARTIN COMICS #5In this third and final installment of our discussion with Martian Comics creator and Sequart Organization founder Julian Darius, we discuss characters’ vs. readers’ vs. believers’ perspectives on Jesus and Paul, as well as the future of his series and any relationship it might have to real-world religions dealing with extraterrestrials.

S&S: I wonder: Of all the stories in this issue, “What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?” features the titular Martians the least, perhaps only in reference to the Athenians “Unknown god […] a placeholder the Athenians use, knowing their knowledge of the gods to be limited.” Do readers know from “Ezekiel” (and “The Galilean” and “Lazarus”) what it is the Athenians don’t, namely that aliens have had an influence in the spiritual affairs of humankind? Is this the manner of answer that Lazarus is seeking?

JD: I love that you saw a connection between the Unknown God and the Martians. That’s not my own primary reading, but it’s there. It follows, once you connect this story with “Ezekiel” — the Martians are, in a sense, an unknown god to the Greeks. And you’re right that they don’t know about Martians, any more than the ancient Jews did. There are other Martian stories to come that kind of play with this same sort of thing, in which humans sort of realize there are forces or divinities out there, beyond their ability to understand. So that’s definitely there, and you’re smart to pick up on it, but to me, that’s a layer, rather than the primary meaning.

Paul cites the “Unknown God” in Acts. There’s a historical dispute as to whether it really existed or not, or to what extent. Was there a temple to the Unknown God? Was there a statue or monument? From what I’ve read, some think yes, some think no. If I remember correctly, Paul only mentions an inscription to the Unknown God, and there’s some ambiguity about what he’s referring to. But it’s a wonderful concept, this polytheistic statement of humility. I suppose you could see it as a parody of polytheism — “We hope we didn’t leave anyone out!” And it is that. But it’s also this wonderful admission, by the smartest city around, that yeah, we don’t know anything. Here’s a monument to that idea. Wow.

I was always fascinated by the Unknown God. As a kid, I thought it was funny that Paul said he was going to tell people about it, because this frames his god in the context of Greek polytheism. Saying that, you’re essentially saying that you’re going to add a god to the Greek pantheon. You can’t say this and then preach monotheism, really. It’s at least very disingenuous. It wasn’t until studying Greek history in college that I began really appreciating the humility of the concept and how it fit into the Greek philosophical outlook. So I love the Unknown God concept and this story from Acts, and I included it on that basis. It illustrates more the difference between Paul’s arrogant “you’re ignorant!” preaching and the nuances of Athenian philosophy.

But yeah, you’re totally right: you can look at the Unknown God and think, “Yeah, they don’t know about the Martians, who played the role of God to Ezekiel.” And who were behind Jesus in the series. Continue reading The Martian Chronicles of Julian Darius, Part III →

contributors, interviews

The Martian Chronicles of Julian Darius, Part II

Continuing our interview with Martian Comics creator and the Sequart Organization founder Julian Darius, we move from his depiction of the prophet Ezekiel to his treatment of Lazarus and of Jesus, “The Galilean”:

S&S: “Ezekiel” is followed by the longer, 11-page, “What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?” The title, presumably, comes from the writings of the Church Father Tertullian, yet the story focuses on Lazarus, the man Jesus resurrected, and Paul. What’s the connection between the title and the concerns of the story?

JD: The quote comes from a later period. But it’s key to the point of the story.

On the one hand, the story allows us to catch up with Lazarus, seeing how he’s evolved —

S&S: Since readers last saw him in issue #2 of Martian Comics, freshly resurrected by Jesus but, in effect, unable to fully live or rejoin what was his life.

JD: Right. Lazarus actually has a cameo in issue #1, but issue #2 is the first to have a story all his own. The idea is to follow up on the Lazarus story, because the Bible never tells us what happened to him. The point is that Jesus resurrected him, and it’s a miracle – but Lazarus is just a prop, really. He’s a demonstration of Jesus’s power. So I thought “what happened next” was an interesting idea, and I thought this tension – about how Lazarus is kind of forgotten, once he’s resurrected – should be part of the story.

So in issue #2, Lazarus is resurrected, but he’s been decaying a little, and these rural Jews of the first century, who were pretty superstitious, would have seen him as a supernatural thing. They’re scared of him, and he doesn’t look right. It’s not going to be like “Oh, Lazarus, glad you’re alive again, old chap!” No, there are going to be rumors, and any physical deformity or ailment was seen as potentially demonic or dangerous. That’s why Jesus ministering to lepers was such a thing. And in those days, you really needed a community to survive. So Lazarus is alive, but he’s kind of a pariah. And he sees how this is hurting his family – that, as he says, he’s of no use to them.

So Lazarus is kind of figuring out what being resurrected means. It’s not just that you came back to life. You’re different now. You look different, and you’re treated differently. Jesus does his miracle, and everyone’s impressed, but no one really follows up with Lazarus. There’s no post-resurrection counselors or anything.

Along with this, what does resurrection mean biologically? Does someone who’s been resurrected return to life and live out a normal lifespan, as if they hadn’t died? Do they get a week and then die again? Maybe resurrection’s not permanent! Or do they live forever? I think we usually don’t ask these kinds of questions, and it’s not a focus of these stories in the Bible, where the point is that Jesus is powerful because he resurrected someone – implicitly encouraging us to believe. We kind of assume that any bodily decay is healed as part of the resurrection, although that doesn’t necessarily follow. And I was interested in exploring all of this. My Lazarus doesn’t have his bodily decay healed, and whatever energy resurrected him is still in him. He’s immortal, although he doesn’t know it at first. He learns it in pretty dramatic fashion in that story.

Continue reading The Martian Chronicles of Julian Darius, Part II →