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Tag: comics

Jews and superheroes

Jews and superheroes

Mark Leiren-Young (photo from Mark Leiren-Young)

From a neurotic gentleman who dresses like a bat, to a wise-cracking human spider, to a Super-Mensch appearing in the bulrushes, not to mention a green golem – it is impossible to escape the Jewish influences of comic superheroes, says Mark Leiren-Young, a creative writing instructor at the University of Victoria.

Put another way, Leiren-Young told the Independent, “It would be simpler to name the iconic comic superheroes who were not shaped by Jewish immigrants. It’s a very small list: Wonder Woman and Shazam. That’s it.  That’s all of them.”

In his classes, Leiren-Young and his UVic students examine and analyze the origins of the classic superheroes, almost all of whom were created by Jewish immigrants in the United States. In the first half of the 20th century, these creators were working in comics at least in part because they were not allowed to get jobs in advertising or journalism at the time. In other words, Jews were permitted to do the low-class work that “proper people” would not consider.

Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Green Lantern, the Flash, Dr. Strange and numerous others on the superhero roster were all products of Yiddishkeit, according to Leiren-Young, whose classes on the DC Universe and the Marvel Universe are among the most popular electives at the university.

“One of the things that fascinated me when I did a deep dive into this – all of these Jewish creators were creating characters who were not shy about their religion, though there were none who overtly identified as Jewish. For example, Spider-Man’s sense of humour is absolutely Borscht Belt humour. It is Stan Lee’s humour,” he said, referring to the character’s creator. “Now, you’re seeing the actor playing Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) saying he just assumed he was a Jewish character. That’s how he reads.”

The perceived Jewishness of the early manifestations of comic superheroes was not lost on the Nazis. In 1940, a copy of Look magazine, featuring a two-page segment on how Superman would end the war, made its way to the desk of Das Schwartze Korps, the weekly publication of the SS, in Germany. The Nazis attacked Superman’s creator, writing, “Jerry Siegel, an intellectually and physically circumcised chap who has his headquarters in New York, is the inventor of a colourful figure with an impressive appearance, a powerful body, and a red swim suit who enjoys the ability to fly through the ether.

“The inventive Israelite named this pleasant guy with an overdeveloped body and underdeveloped mind ‘Superman.’ He advertised widely Superman’s sense of justice, well-suited for imitation by the American youth. As you can see, there is nothing (they) won’t do for money!”

The Nazis, led by Joseph Goebbels, their chief propagandist, were concerned about Superman’s sense of justice, Leiren-Young contends. The effects of the German invective against Superman and his creators carried over to these shores as well, with DC Comics being picketed by American Nazis in 1940.

“The creators of Superman were living in a Jewish section of Cleveland and were emphatically impressed with the idea of social justice,” Leiren-Young said.

The Superman-going-to-war spread in Look magazine preceded another daring Jewish-inspired comic – Captain America punching Hitler – that would be published in 1941, before the United States entered the war.

The Jewish creators of Superman and Captain America essentially were going to war and defining Hitler as the enemy before any American troops were involved, Leiren-Young explained.

“Captain America was created to punch Hitler. He looks like a nerdy Jew until he gets the super serum and then turns into the All-American Hero, which also created protests from the American Nazi Party. These were controversial because there were still so many Americans who were really not keen on the United States going to war,” said Leiren-Young.

Such imagery continued after the war. In the 1961 comic “The Death of Superman,” for example, the setting for the trial of Lex Luthor, Superman’s archenemy, strongly resembles the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel.

In another postwar Jewish connection, the scientist who invented Captain America in the comic series looks increasingly like Albert Einstein as the story progresses.

Leiren-Young developed an interest in comics at an early age, “raiding” his uncle’s collection after Shabbat dinners. “He had everything, but for me it was all about the DC Comics. I remember there were all sorts of different comics, but a lot of DC superheroes,” said Leiren-Young, who has more than 15,000 comic books in his collection.

In 2014, when Swerve magazine asked writers across Canada to name the most influential book they read as a youth, Leiren-Young responded, “I’ve written a few stories about how and why I fell in love with comics, but I never imagined that having a collection of 15,000-plus comics would launch my career as a television writer or become a job qualification for teaching certain university classes,” he tells his students.

Leiren-Young has written and/or developed animated shows for Netflix, BBC Kids, ABC, Teletoon and other broadcasters. He has also written for BBC’s live-action CGI superhero series Ace Lightning, and his other cartoon credits include scripts for ReBoot, Transformers: Beast Wars, RollBots, Class of the Titans and Pucca.

Beyond his classes and comics, Leiren-Young is a playwright, author, journalist, filmmaker and performer. The Hundred-Year-Old Whale, a film he wrote and directed, received the 2017 Writers Guild of Canada award for best documentary. His memoir, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, won the 2009 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

Leiren-Young recently gave a talk about comic superheroes at Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El and hopes to address a Vancouver audience about the subject in the near future. His knowledge and enthusiasm for comics extends well beyond the confines of a standard newspaper article. He recommends Up, Up and Oy Vey by Simcha Weinstein, Stan Lee: A Life in Comics by Liel Leibowitz and Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero by Roy Schwartz for further reading on the subject.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Format ImagePosted on July 21, 2023August 1, 2023Author Sam MargolisCategories LocalTags comics, education, Holocaust, immigrants, Mark Leiren-Young, superheroes, University of Victoria, UVic
Living with prostate cancer

Living with prostate cancer

Sima Elizabeth Shefrin’s new book, Embroidered Cancer Comic, will be launched on Sept. 15 at the Roundhouse.

Cancer is a word often whispered. Sex is certainly not spoken of in polite company. Yet Sima Elizabeth Shefrin tackles both topics in her new book, Embroidered Cancer Comic (Singing Dragon, 2016), which receives its Vancouver launch on Sept. 15 at Roundhouse Community Centre.

The comic begins with Shefrin’s husband, Bob Bossin, coming home from the doctor with a diagnosis of high cholesterol. “Oh, he also said my PSA was up,” Bossin tells Shefrin. After some understandable delays, Bossin gets the needed biopsy. While the couple are enjoying a funny movie together, the call from the doctor comes: prostate cancer.

book cover - Sima Elizabeth Shefrin’s new book, Embroidered Cancer ComicIn a mere 30 pages, with text and illustrations by Shefrin, Embroidered Cancer Comic shows Bossin’s uncertainty over treatment options, his efforts to learn more about the cancer, the emotional stress on him and Shefrin, as well as the effects of the cancer and its treatments on the couple’s sex life.

“The strain of the prostate cancer journey on relationships cannot be overstated, yet patients and their partners are left to figure this out for themselves,” writes Dr. Peter Black of Vancouver Prostate Centre – Bossin’s surgeon – in a brief commentary at the end of the comic, where both Shefrin and Bossin also share more of their story.

Helping others was one of Shefrin’s goals.

“I’m hoping the book will help couples in this situation be able to communicate,” she told the Independent.

Already, it’s had an impact.

“I thought it had potential for being a major project, especially after I got the publishing contract,” said Shefrin. “But then, of course, you don’t leave that in the hands of the gods. Singing Dragon has been very good for getting publicity in Britain, in both the comic and the medical worlds. In Canada, I’ve done most of it myself.

“I believe that this book can do real good in the world,” she said, sharing that a man in Quebec had written her “about what a difference it had made to both him and his wife.”

She said, “That’s what I’m hoping to do. I believe in the comic, so I’m willing to do whatever pushing I need to, to get it out into the world.”

Shefrin is a noted fabric artist, her website name – stitchingforsocialchange.ca – perfectly describing the nature of her work.

“I have often used my art to work through life events and to create awareness and conversation about taboo or contentious subjects,” she writes at the end of the comic book. “But nothing has made me feel as vulnerable as the creation of this comic. At the same time, it has helped me realize that, when you’re there, cancer becomes a part of daily life, like buying groceries or washing dishes.”

It took Shefrin three years to sew the embroidered line drawings, which were then photographed for the book. When asked if she ever thought of creating the images in a more expedient way, Shefrin said, “Fabric is my medium. The books I illustrated are mostly paper collage, but even when I work in paper, I think like a fabric artist. I did drawings first and then embroidered them, and I always liked the embroidered result better than the original drawing.”

The book “started out as a piece of art,” she said. “I thought I might self-publish or maybe simply photocopy a kind of catalogue for a show. But, one day, I came across the Graphic Medicine site and realized that there was a whole world out there of people making comics about medical issues. I’d had no idea.

“So, I started looking at the site regularly as well as at their Facebook page. Occasionally, there would be postings for people looking for comic strips on this and that and, if it was vaguely relevant, I’d send out my work. I do this a lot and often it comes to nothing. But, a couple of months later, I got an email from Jessica Kingsley saying they might be interested in publishing my work. It took me about an hour to figure out who they were and how they found me. They published it through their imprint, Singing Dragon. After that, the focus shifted and became about creating the comic, a story with a beginning, middle and end, instead of an art series. Now that it’s in print, I’m back to creating the quilts for the art series.”

The book has received many very positive reviews, including one in the U.K. medical journal The Lancet – and, according to the book’s Facebook page, it earned “a lovely personal note from Judi Dench,” who is mentioned in the comic. Specifically, when Shefrin asks her husband, “Who really excites you?” his answer is Dench.

The most touching review of the book comes from Bossin. “And because you live with cancer, whoever you live with lives with it, too, as Elizabeth’s comic shows so tenderly,” he writes. “For me, there is no one I would rather live with cancer with. No one.”

Those curious about what Dame Judi said and other stories behind the comic’s creation can ask Shefrin and Bossin at the Sept. 15 launch, which starts at 7 p.m. The quilted original illustrations are on display at the Roundhouse’s Window Gallery until Oct. 30.

Format ImagePosted on September 9, 2016September 7, 2016Author Cynthia RamsayCategories BooksTags Bossin, comics, health, prostate cancer, relationships, Shefrin
Comic book radio show

Comic book radio show

The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth comes to York Theatre April 30 and May 1. (photo from Jason Neulander)

The story takes place in 1933. And, were it not the full-color cartoon panels being projected onto a large screen, you might feel as if you were also back in 1933 while watching the live performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth at York Theatre April 30 and May 1.

Target Earth is the first instalment of a trilogy that follows “Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Molly Sloan and her intrepid research assistant Timmy Mendez,” as they “team up with a mysterious librarian … named Ben Wilcott. Together, they travel from Romania to Scotland to the Alps to Tunis to the Robot Planet and finally to Imperial Zygon to defeat a terrible threat to the very future of humanity: an invading force of sludge-monsters from the planet Zygon!”

The dozens of characters are voiced on stage by three actors. They are joined by a Foley artist, who creates all of the sound effects, and a pianist/organist who provides the music soundtrack. The full-color comic book is projected onto a movie screen. In Vancouver, the actors will be Rachel Landon, Brock England and Jeff Mills, with Kelly Matthews in charge of the sound effects and Harlan Hodges on piano and organ.

The series – comprised of Target Earth, Robot Planet and Twin Infinity – is produced and directed by Jason Neulander.

photo - Jason Neulander
Jason Neulander (photo from Jason Neulander)

Neulander grew up in New Jersey and went to college at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he majored in theatre.

“Right out of school, I founded a company called Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, Tex., where we developed and produced new plays. The Intergalactic Nemesis came out of that company, originally as a radio play,” he told the Independent.

“I ran Salvage from 1994 to 2008 and built the company up to a point where it’s now something of a local institution. They’re still going strong without me. In 2008, I decided to focus entirely on The Intergalactic Nemesis and got invited to bring the show to the Long Centre for the Performing Arts [in Austin]. The venue there was 2,400 seats and I felt like that was too big to house my little radio play. So, I came up with the idea of projecting comic book artwork to create a visual spectacle to fill the room. That version of the show premièred in 2010 and we’ve been on the road with it ever since.”

Based on an original idea by Ray Patrick Colgan, the touring show was adapted from the radio drama by Colgan, Neulander, Jessica Reisman, Julia Edwards and Lisa D’Amour. The comic-book artwork for Target Earth is by Tim Doyle with Paul Hanley and Lee Duhig; the sound effects were created by Buzz Moran; and Graham Reynolds was the composer. Others, of course, helped bring the whole production to fruition.

For his part, Neulander said his biggest inspiration for The Intergalactic Nemesis was his kids. “I wanted to make something that I could enjoy with them,” he said. “That’s actually worked out pretty well! Artistically, this show is all about pushing my own inner-kid buttons. I was 7 when Star Wars came out (the first one) and 12 when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out and I love that kind of storytelling.

“One of my favorite memories as a kid was watching the old Flash Gordon serials and the old Ray Harryhausen movies on TV with my dad on Saturday mornings. When I was a little older, I got really into golden-age sci-fi short fiction, like Bradbury and Asimov and those guys. When I was a young adult, I discovered golden-age Hollywood movies for myself – His Girl Friday hugely influenced our script. I kind of backed into both radio drama and comic books, so maybe those are actually a little less influential on the show than those other things.”

While there is no overt Jewish aspect to the story, Neulander said his sense of Jewish heritage played a role in its creation.

“This show is all about the heroes defeating the bad guys more through smarts than through violence,” he explained. “The main male character is a librarian, so I feel like there’s got to be some Talmud in there somewhere. But, more than that, I think my upbringing taught me that if you work hard, you can succeed against all odds. I’m not sure if that’s solely a Jewish thing, but it’s definitely what the story of this show is all about.”

And Target Earth won’t just take you to another time, but place.

“It’s so much fun!” said Neulander. “It’s like getting to watch an animated movie and seeing how they do it all at the same time. The visual images are just beautiful to look at and then you have three voice actors playing so many characters, often in the same scene, you have one person using all these unusual objects to make sounds you never thought they could make (my favorite is a trail from a box of mac and cheese), and the music just soars. You really do get taken to another world.”

While Neulander is taking a creative break from the Intergalactic world – “I’m just wrapping up a script for a thriller, which will be my film directing debut” – the series’ shows keep touring. This summer, said Neulander, “we are taking Twin Infinity to the fringe festival in Edinburgh in what we think will be a very splashy U.K. première.”

But first, Target Earth and target Vancouver.

“We’ve been itching to get to Vancouver for a few years now,” said Neulander. “I think that your city really is one of the ideal places for this show. I just think audiences are going to eat it up! Can’t wait to get there!”

Shows are April 30, 4 and 7 p.m., and May 1, 2 p.m. Tickets start at $25 from tickets.thecultch.com or 604-251-1363.

Format ImagePosted on April 22, 2016April 20, 2016Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags comics, Cultch, Intergalactic, Neulander, sci-fi
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