- The American comic book
industry as we know it
began in the back rooms of
New York's garment district
and grew into a
multi-billion dollar industry
spanning print and film.
Over nearly 100 years the
characters of popular comics
went from looking like this,
to looking like this.
As American attitudes
towards racial diversity
changed over that time,
comic books didn't just
reflect those changes,
but also played a unique role
in advancing those changes.
How did the background of the creators
of the great American superheroes
influence the stories they told,
and make comics a powerful platform
for advancing equality and acceptance?
Comic books in American have
existed since the 1840s,
but what we generally think
of as comic books today,
really only started in the 1930s,
with what is known as The
Golden Age of Comic Books.
The comic book industry really took off
with the publication of
Action Comics #1 in 1938,
which featured Superman, a character
created by Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster,
the children of Jewish
immigrants from Lithuania
and the Netherlands.
And, as it turned out,
the comic book industry
was well suited to Jews.
- Jewish people having been barred
or at least not very welcome
in the more upscale entertainment mediums.
Gravitated, therefore to what
they could wrap their hands on.
- You know, If you were
a creative Jewish guy
or woman in the 30s and the 40s,
you couldn't get a job
in an advertising agency.
You couldn't get a job in
prestigious journalism.
These were occupations that were reserved
for the sons and daughters
of well-heeled All American WASP families.
You could, however, get
a job in this kind of
Wild West of an enterprise in which people
drew these funny books that sold for,
you know, a pittance
and were meant probably
for kids or feeble minded adults,
and it didn't really matter so much.
- The result was an industry dominated
by Jewish immigrants and
the children of immigrants.
Two of DC's founders were
from Romania and Ukraine.
Marvel's founder was one of 17 children
of Lithuanian immigrants,
and the founders of what is now
Archie Comics were all Jews.
Many of the heroes
themselves, including Batman,
Green Lantern, the Fantastic Four,
the Avengers, Spiderman, and many more,
were written by Jews as well.
- Nobody was bragging
about being in comics
they were a place for either
wannabes or has-beens.
But it was a place where
kids, really teenage kids,
with a high school education, if that,
but with some ability to
write and draw could get in.
- These Jewish and immigrant creators
brought their experiences and values
to the stories they told.
From the way their religion influenced
the morals and ideals in the stories,
to the backgrounds and personalities
of the heroes themselves.
- I think they do grow very much out
of the immigrant experience.
The sort of prototypic example
that people always use is Superman,
who comes to earth from a
distant planet to a new place,
new culture, all of that.
- The whole idea of the secret identity
is a very immigrant slash Jewish thing.
Everybody has some kind of dual identity,
but I think for Jews
that hits home very much.
- And the characters that they built off
of their experiences
were certainly reflective
of what they wanted to see
as a more perfect world.
- Things like helping
others, self-sacrifice,
standing up for what's right.
All of which are also very Jewish values.
- Jewish writers would continue
to play a major role in comics,
as the medium and heroes would
develop over the decades,
through the Silver Age of American Comics
in the 50s and 60s,
the Bronze Age in the 70s
and mid 80s, and beyond.
Over the years as Jews
became more accepted
in mainstream culture,
the comics they wrote changed as well.
- There comes a point in
which you start feeling
a little bit more secure.
You start feeling a
little bit more at home
and you start making
almost the opposite move,
which is to say "And
now, let us introduce you
to some of our ideas
and our sensibilities,"
which is very much what Stan
Lee and Marvel Comics did.
- So, comics evolved from being
about these archetypal American heroes
to including more diverse characters.
- Saying "Hey, you can come in here too,
we're all part of this.
We're all on this planet together."
And it doesn't matter again,
whether it's intended,
or it's conscious, or it's unconscious,
everybody's invited to
be part of this universe.
Everybody belongs there,
one way or another,
and you see it, you see it in the stream
of characters even today.
- You had African Americans,
you had Asian Americans,
LGBTQ, let's not forget women also.
And I think that you can
draw an interesting curve,
or chronology that ties
the outsider status
of a particular group of people in society
to their ascendance in comics.
And as they become more accepted,
their relationship with comics
becomes much more nuanced.
- There can be no question that comics
were hugely ahead of
their time in showcasing
people of different ethnic groups,
people of different sexual orientations,
people who had different
ideas and different politics.
Comic books felt safe doing it
because they were always
seen as the kind of stepchild
of pop culture, and so they
could take much wider risks
and they could really revel in being
that much more subversive
and that much more inclusive
and that much more creative
with the stories that they told.
- So did this medium,
that brought outsiders
to the forefront, and shared
their values and concerns,
play a role in shaping
a more tolerant society?
- I would like to believe that there
is at least some correlation,
if not causation,
between the fact that these comic books
soon became the beating heart
of American popular culture,
and the notion that we
have progressed vastly
in the last 30, 40 years
towards achieving greater
equality to all Americans.
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