The most recent episode of the podcast Panel2Panel had an illuminating discussion on minority characters that feature in comics and don’t suck.  It’s most definitely worth listening to.

One thing that struck me though about their discussion was how there was no mention of Jewish superheroes.  That’s not a judgement on either Grant or Kitty.  You only have to look at this paltry list on Wikipedia to see that there’s barely enough Jewish superheroes to make a minyan.

What I noticed about the Wikipedia list – aside from the revelation that the Thing was Jewish and had only recently had his Bar Mitzvah – was that most of these Jewish heroes were either non-practicing or agnostic.  This is in direct contrast, for example, to the THE 99 who all identify as practising Muslims.*

Now, to be fair, from my limited research there also seems to be very few practising Christians in the comic book world.  And it could be sensibly argued that the reason why Muslim superheroes are shown to be practising, as distinct from Jews or Christians, is to provide an increasingly Islamophobic first world with positive portrayals of Muslims.**  And maybe you could also argue that Jewish identity has been subsumed into the mainstream and therefore there’s no need to have characters in either comics books or TV identify as Jewish because unless you’re a Chasid it’s not that much different from the lapsed Christian who might go to  church during Easter or Christmas.

Still, what I find fascinating is that while Jews – as writers and artists and publishers – were influential in the development of the comic book (and still are today) they never felt comfortable in representing their faith in those same books.  Like the film studios – that were predominantly run by Jews*** – they felt that the best way to deal with persecution and anti-semitism was to assimilate into the culture, to become like everyone else.  And so, while Magneto or Bobby Drake or The Thing might have been envisaged as Jewish, you’d be hard pressed to find a mention of this in those early comic books.

While I’m not much of a practicing Jew these days, I still would love to see a comic book that genuinely deals with the tension between someone who has super powers and is also a practising Jew.****  The idea that having god-like abilities doesn’t absolve you from following the 613 mitzvot.  (I can just imagine the scene where a Rabbi tells the our hero that he can only use his powers on Shabbos if it’s in the aid of saving someone’s life.  Otherwise, it’s forbidden).

I’m sure it’s unlikely to happen, at least not with the major publishers.  It might smack of tokenism, and often these sort of things bring anti-semites out of the wood work, just like the revelation that the new Spiderman was going to be a person of colour.  But then that’s the point that the Panel2Panel discussion was making, that today finding any sort of decent representation of a minority group – whether based on race or faith – is hard to come by.

* From what I could tell, but happy to be proven wrong.

** A point made on the Panel2Panel podcast.

*** It’s fascinating to note that the first Hollywood film to deal seriously with anti-semitism (The Gentleman’s Agreement) had basically no Jewish involvement.  In fact Samuel Goldwyn (Jewish) was afraid that if they made the film it would stir up trouble.

**** Again, I don’t necessarily mean Chasid here because that comes with its own baggage.  I’m thinking a modern orthodox Jew, or a Reform Jew – the minimum requirement is that they have to identify as Jewish and believe in God… oh and also be reasonably knowledgeable in the faith and history.