Earlier this month, Jewish Boston sat down with Newton’s Megan Margulies to discuss the legacy of her grandfather Joe Simon (born Hymie Simon) , co-creator of Captain America. Her new memoir, My Captain America: A Granddaughter’s Memoir of a Legendary Comic Book Artist, examines how her grandfather-artist was both “supremely proud of being Jewish” while simultaneously “not very religious.”

His parents were very strict and religious, and I think that sort of scared him off from it a little bit. But obviously with his creation of Captain America and fighting Nazis and giving his voice to that showed how important his lineage is and his family who came from Europe and England. And whenever I brought home a guy, he always asked, “Is he Jewish?” He was very concerned about that. I think Captain America is definitely his most Jewish-related character, but a lot of the creators back then in the Golden Age were children of immigrants and Jewish.

Margulies’ book goes on sale next week, and she will be speaking virtually at Brookline Booksmith next Friday, August 7th.