The Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto, Ontario has announced its late October showcase of connections between the comic book industry and the Jewish people. Of particular note is the involvement, along with co-curator Ron Kasman, of Steven Bergson, long-time S&S friend and contributor. Steve runs the Jewish Comics blog and is the force behind The Jewish Comics Anthology.
Details can be found here and admission is free, though reservations are required for opening night, October 23rd.
Over at his Jewish Comics blog, S&S’s own Steve Bergson interviews Barry Deutsch on his latest installment of the Hereville series as well as the recent honor of once again winning the Sydney Taylor Award. The Hereville graphic novels feature, as quoted on the latest cover, “yet another 11-year-old time-traveling Orthodox Jewish babysitter” Mirka Hirschberg.
In their third interview together, Bergson asks Deutsch about his inspiration for Hereville: How Mika Caught a Fish:
When I first started writing this story, the villain was originally a magic chicken. But then I was inspired to use a magical fish character by a 2003 news story in New York, in which some Hasidic Jews reported hearing a carp in a fish market yell in Hebrew. This eventually got mixed up with the old fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife,” about a wish-granting Fish – the Brothers Grimm collected that fairy tale, among others.
More on this last of the 11-year-old Mirka books (not to rule out a 12-year-old Mirka’s set of adventures) and its link to Menachem Luchins in the interview!
Over the course of the past year, various pieces — pertinent both to comics in terms of religion specifically or simply the serious consideration of comics — have come to light that either fell through the cracks at the time or deserve some wider coverage. They include:
Back in mid-2006, Today.com reporter M. Alex Johnson took a look, albeit a superficial one, at the religiosity of Spider-Man, The Thing, X-Men villain Rev. Stryker, the Atheist and others with “At the Comics Shop, Religion Goes Graphic.”
Graphic Medicine, founded by Ian Williams in 2007, was relaunched with MK Czerwiec in 2012, and they caught the “Graphic Fiction” panel (moderated by Shelly Wall) at the Toronto Comics & Medicine conference that year. Presenters included Steven Bergson with “From Ivanhoe to Rex Mundi: Jews and Medicine in Comic Books, Comic Strips, and Graphic Novels,” Jeffrey Monk with “A Ghost of an Idea: A Reflection on My Comic Adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carole’ for the Medical Humanities,” and Lorenzo Servitje with “Empathy in the gutter: Participatory delusion in graphic adaptation of Shutter Island.”
Read the Spirit, an “online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity” as well as an extension of Dr. Wayne Baker’s Our Values program, answered the question to “Why Comics and Comic Books Are Important Today!” — and the solution seems to be “independent comics artist and author” Kurt Kolka.
Most recently, Gene Yang of Comics in Education provided a valuable, digest-sized overview of the “History of Comics in Education,” spanning from 1933 to the turn of the 21st century — an adjacent topic to Religion & Comics but relevant and useful for a sense as to how serious academic discussion has arisen not only in but also for the classroom.
And then there’s just this odd/funny/insulting/compelling comic from Kevin Moore’s In Contempt comics from back in 2008. No better place to put it than here:
“Gods Damn America” by Kevin Moore
@ the intersection of religion and comics: Graphic Religion
