Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way
The question of whether Superman is Jewish is, Brod admits, “one that takes a certain amount of chutzpah to even raise.” But when he says our favorite superheroes are Jewish, Brod doesn’t mean it literally: he’s speaking of the way the evolution of Jewish culture in America is reflected in our superheroes. Superman, for example, was created in the late 1930s as an immigrant refugee who felt it necessary to hide his own identity behind a false one. In fact, many of the great early comic-book writers, creators, and publishers—Lee, Kirby, Gaines, Kane, and Superman’s Shuster and Siegel—were Jewish, and Brod makes a strong case that their heroic creations were designed, in one way or another, to express or reflect their own identities. How closely the evolution of the comic-book superhero mirrors the evolution of the Jewish culture in America is perhaps difficult to quantify, and Brod stops well before that point. Alongside such important books as Gabilliet’s Of Comics and Men (2009) and Jones’ Men of Tomorrow (2004), this one should take its place as an essential study of the field. --David Pitt