The Comic Book Industry and Its Jewish Elements

Intro

Much has been said about the disproportionate influence Jews wield in Hollywood. Certainly there are many gentiles working amongst the crew, as well as actors, but the bulk of writers, directors, producers, etc—that is, the roles with the greatest amount of narrative control, and, by extension, the purveyors of propaganda—have always been heavily Jewish; the same can be said of the comic book industry, though it isn't told with quite as much gusto from Jewry, or often noted by those critical of Jewish power. Nevertheless, comics, along with other art forms and the media, have had a profound, often negative, influence on American society. 

Haaretz:

Event co-founder and Marvel comics Spider-Man author Fabrice Sapolsky told the Journal: "Ninety percent of the creators of comic books are Jewish. They created that industry because they couldn’t do anything else,” he said. “It started with a young pack of kids, 18, 19, sometimes younger, who just wanted to have people give them a shot. It was important for us to honor those people.”

Al Jaffee, an important early figure, had said of the comic industry and its Jewish majority: "We couldn't get into newspaper strips or advertising. Ad agencies wouldn't hire a Jew. One of the reasons we Jews drifted into the comic book business is that most of the comic book publishers were Jewish. So, there was no discrimination there." [1]

And Will Eisner, another key figure, said, "Also, this business was brand new. It was the bottom of the social ladder, and it was wide open to anybody. Consequently, the Jewish boys who were trying to get into the field of illustration found it very easy to come aboard." [2]

Any investigation by mainstream historians as to why the comic industry or Hollywood is so Jewish is always the same: because they were barred from entering into other occupations. Yet they became giants in these fields and are now heavily represented in media, Hollywood, banking, NGOs, law, etc, essentially anything involving influencing society or becoming wealthy, with many of them going on to become philanthropists, and often not improving society, instead poisoning it. 

Even looking back to before the Civil Rights era, perhaps there was discrimination amongst some of the smaller employers and companies for Jews, but at the highest level of office, in the Roosevelt Administration, the departments were heavily staffed with Jews and they seemed to have scant trouble rising to power.

The same story was bandied about when it came to the medieval period and Jewish money lending, where they were restricted from owning land, so they couldn't farm and had to earn their keep by money lending. Historians have begun to dispute this:

Whether in Narbonne in 899 or Gironne in 922, in Trier in 919 or Worms in 1090, in Barcelona in 1053 or Toledo in 1222, or in early medieval England, were permitted to acquire and own land if they wished. Not only were Jews legally permitted to own land, they could acquire significant amounts (especially in Italy, southern Spain, southern and east-central France, and Germany); possessed fields, gardens, and vineyards; and owned, transferred, and mortgaged land holdings. They preferred to hire tenants, sharecroppers, and wage laborers to work their lands. For themselves, they chose the most skilled and profitable occupations, foremost money lending. [3]

Nevertheless, even if some of their cries of discrimination are exaggerated or even outright lies, discrimination of some form against Jews appears to have been relatively common in the U.S. prior to 1964. It varied by state (though the bulk of Jews were in New York or California) and locality. With universities and colleges there were quotas and many employers chose to hire an applicant based on religion, ethnicity, etc. 

During the early years of the cold war, a survey of New York businesses revealed that 15% of them asked job applicants to indicate their religion; 9% of NY employment agencies did the same. Outside NY those numbers were as high as 60-67%. 7% of NY applicants refused a job for reason of religion. 15% of applicants outside of NY experienced the same. A 1952 American Jewish congress survey of NYC found “that 65 percent of white collar employment agencies were willing to receive and accept discriminatory orders, although they were aware that they constituted a violation of the law.” [4]

In 1947, President Truman’s Commission on Higher Education issued a report stating “quota systems and policies of exclusion practiced by American institutions of higher learning had prevented young people of many religious and racial groups—but particularly Jews and Negroes—from obtaining higher education and professional training.” A 1949 American Council on Education study found that Protestants and Catholics students had a greater chance of college acceptance than an academically comparable Jewish student. [5] 

Although discrimination against Jews did gradually decline after 1945, even before 1964, The government's 1957 religious census indicated over 55% of American Jews listed their vocations as “professional and technical” or “managers, officials, and proprietors” compared to only 23% for the general population. There was also considerable upward mobility with many Jews migrating from urban to suburban environments throughout this period. [6]

It's obvious that a considerable amount of Jews circumvented these "unfair" practices by changing their names, and not disclosing their religion or Jewish ethnicity; alternatively, they forged their own industries, such as with Hollywood or comic publishing; or they were self-employed. In some cases they found gentile employers who didn't discriminate against them or instead found a Jewish employer. 

I'm not fully convinced about the Jewish narrative on this topic and am especially suspicious of Jewish statistics from that period, but a more thorough analysis is beyond the scope of this article.
 

Of course, fair employment was not mandated by law in many cases. Governor Thomas Dewey of New York set the precedent by passing an anti-discrimination bill (FEPC bill) into law. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut followed suit. Indiana, Wisconsin and Oregon adopted legislation that didn’t require enforcement. In 1949, the first city to adopt FEPC legislation was Chicago, followed by Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Other local and state governments would go on to pass fair employment statutes, but there was no federal anti-discrimination law until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [7]

Prior to the Civil Rights Act there was the possibility of freedom of association. There was a sort of ethnic pluralism in which ethnic minorities, including European ones, such as Italian, German, Irish, etc, would form their own neighborhoods prior to Europeans assimilating amongst themselves to such a great extent that we came to think of them as simply "white," with very few whites today having much of an inkling about their genealogy without a DNA test. But during that period, if you decided you didn't want to hire an Irishman, a black, a Jew, or a Chinese, then, in many locations, that was your prerogative. 

Blacks were obviously excluded more than any other group, but during segregation, this allowed them to have their own communities with their own black-run businesses—all of that swept away for the bitter and failed integration we have now. 

I don't feel sorry for Jews over this supposed "anti-semitism" of freedom of association. Not one bit. Now, partly thanks to Jewish influence, we're no more meritocratic than in the past—affirmative action and quotas still reign, most heavily impacting whites and Asians, while benefitting the "marginalized" minorities. And among the "whites" entering university, how many of them are Jewish, benefitting from ethnic nepotism in this milieu or in the upper echelons of the workplace (For an interesting article indicating that Jews are highly overrepresented beyond their ability in elite universities, read Ron Unz's The Myth of American Meritocracy)?

It's of the utmost importance to recognize that this small ethnic minority—one that attempts to blend in with the gentile (specifically white/european Americans in this case) host population as if they were chameleons—have long had a disproportionate amount of input in these fields; if Jews and gentiles have competing interests, and in many cases gentiles don't realize this, or they don't even realize many people whom they believe to be "the same as them" are actually Jews posing as gentiles, is it possible that the gentiles are being coerced to act against their own interest and/or in favor of Jewish interests? 

The answer is yes, as anyone with the slightest awareness of this issue would answer. If the Chinese had disproportionate control of the media and entertainment industries in the U.S., then wouldn't these means of influence reflect Chinese values and desires? Would this not be the same for any race or ethnocentric group that sees themselves as distinct from the majority population? 

On the other hand, the Chinese themselves must recognize this, which is likely a big part of why there is some degree of restricted access to outside media in their country. This is not to say we should restrict media from other countries per se, but what we choose to consume and abstain from consuming affects us profoundly. 

But there is something worthwhile in the media and entertainment being for the people and by the people—a united people, a nation—not a bewildering hodgepodge of multiculturalism, with many peoples to cater to, and most of the creative control being handled by a small, wealthy, and elite minority—one that is highly ethnocentric, unable to be assimilated, placing themselves on a pedestal above all others, and thinking they know what is best for everyone.

While I don't want to stray far from the topic of comics before I've even delved into their history, I will give two examples of the detrimental impact of Jewish usurpation of media and entertainment. 

1) Mel Gibson made Passion of the Christ. Jim Caviezel was a popular actor and he was shunned once he appeared in this movie as Christ. Gibson, with a guilty conscience, even attempted to talk Caviezel out of playing the role after he had asked him to star in the film. Caviezel, being conservative and a more serious Christian than is usual in the U.S., was probably enough for his acting roles to dry up in ultra-liberal Hollywood, but playing Jesus in an "anti-semitic" film was literally the final nail being hammered in.

Some more information on Passion of the Christ and funding:

The most egregious of The Passion’s sins – the alleged antisemitism – had become a point of contention even before the film hit cinemas. Film studio 20th Century Fox revealed they had passed on the chance to distribute The Passion – which Gibson had independently funded – because of pre-emptive protests by Jewish groups. The Anti-Defamation League released a statement that concluded by saying: “The Passion could likely falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews.”

This is just one of many examples of how Hollywood is more about what Jews want than what is popular with the people, and this prevents an honest expression of gentile sensibilities. Yes, Gibson managed to get Passion of the Christ made, but he is wealthy and a household name. Just think of how many gentile artists are either turned away because of their different values or they have something to say that the Jews don't like. How many realize this and don't even bother to try and just go into some other field?

And come to think of it, we have more goddamn films about the holocaust than about Christ. Far more people in this country are Christian rather than Jewish, after all. Christ and Christianity are constantly derided in the media, though complete reverence is expected for Judaism, the Jewish people, and other exotic religions.

Aside from the regular demonization of the religion with the most adherents, anti-white propaganda is also churned out at a rapid pace, all the while racism against non-whites (and most of all, Jews) is the ultimate sin.

2) For another example, this time about the news media, I'll keep it short: We have ample coverage about Israel all the time, a relatively unimportant and small country in a desert wasteland. Our representatives constantly prattle on about anti-semitism and signing legislation to infringe on our rights, whether its freedom of speech under the guise of "hate speech," whether on campus or otherwise, or in the form of anti-BDS bills. And wars in the middle east are agitated for when they are largely to bring about "Greater Israel" at the behest of Jewish neocons and the Israelis rather than any actual U.S. interests. 

Just think how different this country would be without unneeded and pernicious Jewish influence.

Part 1: Early Years of the Comic Book Industry

One of the key sources I used, along with other web, journal, and book sources, was Arie Kaplan's three-part series on the Jewish aspects of the comic book industry: Part 1, part 2, and part 3. The rest of the citations will be found similarly as hyperlinks or down below in the notes section. If a portion of interest is found without a citation or hyperlink, then it is likely from this three-part series.

Comics would have mostly been available as comic strips in the newspaper, until the 1930s, when one could buy standalone comic books in the format people have known and read for years.

Maxwell Charles "M.C." Gaines

The Jewish Maxwell Charles "M.C." Gaines (née Max Ginzberg) and Harry L. Wildenberg, part of Eastern Color Printing (ECP), a company which handled the printing of pulp magazine covers and newspaper comic strips, convinced Gulf Oil to hire ECP to print out promotional comics for their stations, they collaborated to create the popular comic format and reprinted popular syndicated newspaper strips in a "dime-novel"-sized comic book. [8] 

After this initial success, Gaines turned to Dell Publishing, a client of ECP, to finance another series of reprints called Famous Funnies #1, Series 1 (1934). This is generally considered the first true comic book by historians. While Dell Publishing backed Gaines in this venture for the first issue, they soon backed out, leaving just Gaines and ECP to publish the Famous Funnies #1, Series 2 in May 1934. [9][10]

Wanting to sell the copies for more than a free premium, they approached the magazine distributor American News Company to put Famous Funnies on Newsstands all across the U.S., each issue costing a dime. [11]

While sales staggered at first, ECP earned a net of $30,000 monthly after only 12 issues—a very large sum in the 1930s after factoring for inflation. [12] Famous Funnies was selling 400,000 copies per month by 1939. [13]

Despite the success the publication became, Gaines was sacked; he soon struck a new deal with McClure Newspaper Syndicate (MNS) to work on reprints of old newspaper strips. Popular Comics was launched, resulting in titles that included Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, and Gasoline Alley, and The Funnies being featured. Dell Publishing, which previously was involved with Gaines, contracted the printing and editing out to MNS. [14]

Other companies realized the tremendous moneymaking possibilities and numerous publishing companies arose.

By 1941 there were over 30 (If you look through Wikipedia's Golden Age publishers section, you can count that there are more than 30) comic book publishers, producing over 200 titles monthly, with a combined sale of 15 million copies to a youth readership of 60 million. By as early as 1947, 60 million comic books were being sold every month [15]. 

Sheldon Mayer

Sheldon Mayer, another important Jewish figure in comic book history, got his start in the comic industry by working at National Allied Publications (later rebranded as DC Comics, which he returned to in 1939). He edited Popular Comics and The Funnies, as well as creating his own comic strip—Scribbly. [16][17] 

Birth of the Superheroes

It wasn't long before the superhero genre was born. The earliest superhero comic seems to be the Jew Lee Falk's (Who also created The Phantom) forgotten and obscure Mandrake the Magician, debuting in 1934.

Although a bit speculative, perhaps, it is interesting that Jews were so heavily involved in the comic industry and responsible for the proliferation of superhero comics, with their penchant for saving the world and disguising their true identity while doing so, often with extremely aryan-sounding names (generally when Jews change their name, they use something more aryanized or gentile-sounding). Jews are disproportionately involved in SJW activities, Tikkun Olam nonsense, and have often hidden or deemphasized their Jewishness by changing their names and attempting to fit into European societies, all the while subverting them, the Spanish Jews even going so far as the converso ruse.

Speaking of name changing and its connection to multiple, disguised, or altered identities, a large amount of Jewish comic writers had either changed their names prior to entering the comic industry or while they worked within it:

Mercier:

Throughout the war years, comic book writers and artists continued to hide their Jewish background by changing their names on story credits to Americanized versions. In some cases, they did so in order to promote the idea that their publishing house had more writers and artists than in actuality. “Martin decided it shouldn’t look as if Timely could only afford one writer, so I adopted additional pen names.” In some cases, an alias could be used in a political context. For example, artist Jack Kirby “I was saying what was on my mind. And I was extremely patriotic.” Kirby’s statement suggested that Anglicized names sounded more American to these Jewish writers and artists. [18]

While there may sometimes be reasons Jews in the comic industry changed their name other than to hide their Jewishness, like a few examples Mercier goes on to mention, such as the change to the equally Jewish name Marvin Levy to Marv Lev for memorability—clearly an example of not trying to hide his Jewishness; or Stan Lee, who said he wanted to "save" his real name (Stanley Martin Lieber) for when he achieved something he was more proud of, and the stories about multiple pseudonyms to pad out the roster of artists. [19]

But it seems far more likely this was a prophylactic measure by Jews to avoid the U.S. becoming the 110th—or whatever number they were at during that time or now—country for them to be kicked out of.

Superheroes are often outsiders and don't really fit into society, but they have a profound effect on their world (sounds familiar). Superman is an immigrant from outer space. He has a dual life of being a superhero and then disguises himself while working amongst the gentiles. In many comics, they're even persecuted, such as the X-Men, who are an assorted bunch of freaks and pariahs in costumes, etc. It's all quite reminiscent of the "fellow white people" meme, where the Jew tactically pretends to be a non-Jew to coerce and browbeat gentiles. Only with Fantastic Four and a few other superhero titles do they eschew the disguise. 

Though it would be somewhat disingenuous to not at least acknowledge that gentiles have created their share of titles with disguised heroes leading dual lives; among them are The Lone Ranger, Zorro, Scarlet Pimpernel, and The Shadow. It's also quite possible the double identity of superheroes was just an interesting plot device that was endlessly copied in an industry with rapid deadlines and a lack of creativity. 

However, at least one writer steeped in the comic world, Gerard Jones, thinks otherwise and makes a compelling distinction:

Secret identity stories always reverberated with the children of Jewish immigrants, of course, because they were so much about the wearing of the masks that enabled one to be an American, a Modern, a secular consumer, but still part of an ancient society, a link in an old chain, when safely among those who knew one’s secret. The superheroes brought something to these stories that Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel never had, for their true identities, the men in colorful tights, were so elemental, so universal, so transcendent of the worlds that made them wear masks that they carried with them an unprecedented optimism about the value of one’s inner reality. We all knew that Clark Kent was just a game played by Superman and that the only guy who mattered was that alien who showed up in Metropolis with no history and no parents. [20]

Part 2: The Golden Age of Comics

It's difficult to say exactly when the Golden Age of Comic Books began or ended, but it's usually said to range from about the late 1930s to the late 1940s or early 1950s. Alternatively, some say it's 1933-1954. However, what better place is there to start than Superman, debuting in 1938?

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, writer and artist duo, were the Jewish masterminds behind Superman—now one of the most famous comic book heroes, but they spent three years trying to sell it to publishers. 

Mayer also paved the way for Superman to become part of DC Comics' Action Comicswhen he convinced Gaines to show the material to Vin Sullivan in 1937. [21]

The Jews Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz took over DC Comics, and Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 (1938). 

Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebovitz, and Irwin Donenfeld

Harry Donenfeld

Harry Donenfeld is among the more colorful characters of the Golden Age period. Like many of the early comic publishers, he started out in the pulp magazine business, much of the material very sleazy, and he "glad-handed the tobacco dealers, the book jobbers, the local racketeers, the barbers' suppliers, whoever moved sleazy magazines." [22]

As a youth, Donenfeld ran with smalltime gangs, committing or abetting petty crimes. He "bragged of his friendships with gangsters" in the 1930s-1940s when speaking to friends or colleagues, before comics were being seriously targeted for obscenity. He was friends with Frank Costello according to many (Irwin Donenfeld, for example), a gentile gangster with a Jewish wife, who also had close ties to Charles "Lucky" Luciano, and the two Jewish gangsters, Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. [23]

It's speculated Donenfeld may have moved alcohol illegally during the prohibition while importing pulp from Canada. When he acquired the rights for Martin Press to print 6 million subscription leaflets for Hearst magazine, it's also alleged he got the job because his underworld contacts had connections to Moses Annenberg, a Jewish newspaper publisher with links to organized crime. [24]

Superman

In some ways, is Superman not a sort of messiah figure for the Jews, the conquering type they've been waiting for since they rejected Jesus? He's a superhero with such incredible powers that there is no tension at all in the series, until his Achilles' heel, kryptonite, is introduced out of sheer necessity to prevent it from becoming too much of a snore.

Jewish elements abound! He is the only survivor from a homogenous race of scientists from the planet Krypton, the people of which are literally holocausted by the dying red sun nearby their planet, and Superman is named Kal-El, meaning "All that is God" in Hebrew. 

The character Superman was created by Siegel and Shuster in 1933, the same year Hitler came to power, and Kaplan compares Superman's hasty emigration to earth to the Kindertransport mission of 1938-1940 (Superman actually predates this event). He also references the Old Testament story with the Pharaoh's decree to kill all Jewish newborns and Moses's being saved in a basket, floating down the Nile River, which has some similarities to Superman drifting through space to earth. This may or may not be what the creators had in mind, but it's at least interesting speculation.

Some historians have even compared the character Superman to the Jewish legend of the Golem—a creature created by the medieval chief rabbi of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-semitic pogroms. [25] 

Will Eisner, a jewish cartoonist and comic book historian, described superman as "a mythic descendent of the Golem and thus a link in the chain of Jewish tradition." [26]

In Man of Steel issues 80-82 in 1998, Superman literally becomes a Golem and saves the Jews of a Warsaw Ghetto, with two kids who resemble Siegel and Shuster.

Will Eisner expanded this idea to the Jewish-founded superhero genre in general, beyond just Superman:

The Golem was very much the precursor of the super-hero in that in every society there's a need for mythological characters, wish fulfillment. And the wish fulfillment in the Jewish case of the hero would be someone who could protect us. This kind of storytelling seems to dominate in Jewish culture. [27] 

Mordecai Richler, a Jewish novelist, concurs: 

“Superman, The Flash, The Human Torch, even Captain Marvel, were our golems .…There is no doubt, for instance, that The Green Lantern has its origins in Hassidic mythology. Will Eisner’s The Spirit…is given to cabalistic superstitions and speaking in parables.” [28] 

Stan Lee:

"When you think about it, the Incredible Hulk is a golem."

In addition, the highly feminist backstory and character of Wonder Woman, an Amazon woman with superhuman strength and created by the gentile William Moulton Marston, an eccentric polyamorist and psychologist, has Greek trappings, but she was molded from clay, much like a golem. 

And how can one have a discussion on characters in relation to the notion of the golem without mentioning Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm/the Thing?

All-American Comics (AAC) was founded by Max Gaines, along with Donenfeld and Liebowitz, in 1938. AAC was responsible for Flash, created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert, gentile and Jew, respectively; Green Lantern, created by Jews Martin Nodell and Bill Finger, Hawk-Man, Wonder Woman, and Atom. Other influential artists coming from AAC included, Sheldon Mayer, Paul Reinman, and Ben Flinton. The first two are Jews, and I wasn't able to find much info on Flinton.

Other companies at the time were Timely Comics (later to rebrand as Marvel Comics), with the Jew Martin Goodman; Fawcett Comics; Archie Comics, founded by John L. Goldwater, Maurice Coyne, and Louis Silberkleit, all Jews; and Quality Comics. According to Kaplan, these companies were hiring Jewish artists and writers and editors to compete with AAC.

It wasn’t uncommon for publishers to not have in-house studios. Instead they would hire external shops and printers, including a whole stable of writers and artists. Four major shops were Chesler, Eisner-Iger, Lloyd Jacquet, and one established by Jack Binder. At least 16 other shops formed in the 1940s. [29]
The most well-known in comic history was Eisner and Iger Studio (Syndicated Features Corporation), founded by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger, both Jews. Notable Jewish figures they employed were Jack Kirby (née Jacob Kurtzberg, co-creator of X-Men and Fantastic Four), Jules Feiffer, Bob Kane (Batman co-creator), Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, and Lou Fine. Wallace Wood and Bob Powell were probably gentiles. 

Liebowitz and Donenfeld consolidated AAC, National Allied Publications, and Detective Comics Inc. into National Comics in the 1940s. This company is known as DC Comics today, and aside from Superman, Batman must be their most popular title. 

Batman was co-created by the Jews Bob Kane (née Bob Kahn) and Bill Finger. Finger sketched Batman and provided most of his backstory, but he didn't receive any credit until after his death, which all went to Kane at the time, who employed a gaggle of Jewish artists as uncredited "assistants," such as Jerry Robinson, Sheldon Moldoff, and Dick Sprang, all of whom signed Bob Kane's name onto the work. Even Robinson claims to have created the Joker, a villain attributed to Kane.

I feel most of the popular Marvel and DC comic characters have been addressed here or elsewhere, but I will briefly make note of one series from Quality Comics before moving onto the WWII period. Eisner created the Spirit, appearing in moody black and white strips stylized like a noir film, and later reprinted in several collections, was described by the Jew Jules Feiffer, who assisted Eisner with illustration and writing, said of The Spirit's characters: they looked like "they had just stepped off the boat" and the Spirit "reeked of lower middle-class." "We all knew he was Jewish!" His impression was that the Spirit/Denny Colt was an immigrant Jew attempting to assimilate into society. Eisner, however, didn't quite see it that way. [30]

Comics as WWII Propaganda

Jack Kirby:

I found a way to help the war effort by portraying the times in the form of comic characters. I was saying what was on my mind, and I was extremely patriotic!

Stan Lee:

"As comics writers," Stan Lee says, "we had to have villains in our stories. And once World War II started, the Nazis gave us the greatest villains in the world to fight against. It was a slam dunk."

William W. Savage Jr.:

“…comic books became an integral part of the Allied propaganda machine, emphasizing the need for a maximum war effort by portraying the enemy as the inhuman offspring of a vast and pernicious evil,” and “Sending comic books to military personnel testified to the utility of the medium in raising morale through patriotic fervor, even if it should be achieved through appeals to racism.” [31]

Peter Kuper: 

I think that certainly during World War II, the comics that were being done reflected both an American—and particularly a Jewish—attitude with Nazis. [32]

It was President Roosevelt’s intent to use peacetime advertising and entertainment to disseminate patriotic messages to motivate support for the allied cause. Advertising and popular culture would be the tools. The president’s assistant Lowell Mellett and press secretary Stephen T. Early, both former newspapermen, were responsible for implementing this strategy. [33]

[Mellett and Early] strongly believed that support for the President during the foreign policy crisis could be achieved, as it had been during the earlier political struggles, by the widespread distribution of “facts” reflecting administration concerns and efforts. Those would be skillfully packaged by government and then disseminated by the privately owned mass media. [34]

An early and effective example of this strategy can be seen in the 1942 poster, "We Can, We Will, We Must"—originally derived from Carl Paulson's 1941 design for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America with some alterations—featured on billboards all across the U.S. [35]

The War Advertising Council, composed of volunteer copy-writers, editors, writers, and artists, formed in 1941. They advertised the war bonds campaign free of charge, saving the Government money and acting as an effective alternative to official government propaganda. [36]

There was a more limited form of government-directed propaganda disseminated from The Office of Facts and Figures (OFF), as well as precursor organizations such as the Office of Government reports (OGR), the Division of Information in the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), among others, all of which were consolidated to form the Office of War Information (OWI). A distinction was made between information (or "facts" as stated above by Steele) versus propaganda (though in fact this is a sly trick and not much different in most cases). Rather than more emotional rhetoric featured in enemy or past propaganda, Roosevelt wanted to rely on facts, allowing the public to decide for themselves—referred to often as a "strategy of truth." There was also a preference for horizontal propaganda issuing (or appearing to issue from) from society rather than vertical propaganda issuing from the government or leader. [37]

Notably, this notion of facts over propaganda soon dwindled, as OWI was partly more effective than its precursor, OFF, because OFF remained closer to fact, while the OWI, despite their motto of "Truth is Our Strength," embellished and exaggerated its message, looking to exploit the power of a moral crusade and mythical imagery. [38]

Much of this work would be achieved through the careful crafting of messages in entertainment, encapsulated in a quote from Elmer David, head of the OWI:

The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people’s minds is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realise that they are being propagandised. [39]

Unlike magazine, advertising, or radio, all of which were carefully coordinated with the Roosevelt administration for the crafting of war time propaganda, the collaboration of the government appears to have been more relaxed and not as well-documented for comics. [40]

There is, of course, plenty of documented evidence that comic creators had pro-war messages and appealed to patriotic sentiments through story and image to sell their comics. Regardless of how direct communication was between the government and the comic companies, they indeed became another facet of the Allied propaganda machine.

The Army and Navy worked with publishers of comic books in 1943 in an attempt to boost enlistment. While there isn't any data on how effective this was, it's notable that 44% of men in the Army identified as comic book readers. [41]

While the Roosevelt administration was not directly involved, the Writers' War Board (WWB),  a little known entity of the war period, often described as a quasi-governmental agency and founded in 1941, had direct involvement. [42] 

The WWB was funded directly by the federal government through the OWI and had the support of the Jewish  Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.; one of his desires was to have an entity that appeared unconnected to the government to promote policies the government supported but did not feel they could openly endorse. [43] 


Frederica Barach (Barach is a Jewish surname), the WWB's executive secretary, confirmed Morgenthau’s mandate, describing the WWB as devoted to the promotion of ‘‘government policy and popular support for the war effort while the government itself technically refrained from propaganda.’’[44]

A reason for this circumspection and the necessity of distance between the WWB and the U.S government, stated by Howell, was the American public had a certain wariness about imbibing government propaganda in the style heavily employed by Fascistic European powers of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as past negative experiences with the Committee of Public Information, a propagandistic U.S. government agency during WWI; therefore, they believed their only solution was to create entities such as the WWB, which ostensibly wasn't connected to the federal government, being a private organization, though in actuality it was being funded and taking orders through a government agency, with the Jew Clifton Fadiman even stating to Howell that the WWB functioned as "an arm of the government," and in a December 1943 report it was referred to as the "greatest propaganda machine in history." [45]

From a brief look at wikipedia's WWB page, the board appears to be a quarter Jewish, and the advisory council around 16% Jewish. It's of course hard to tell ethnicity in some cases because of limited information, and I'm uncertain if these are only partial lists or not.

85% of the WWB's work was done at the behest of the U.S. government, according to the calculations of board members. [46]


The WWB had control of over 5,000 writers and access to thousands of newspapers and hundreds of radio stations. They also established a symbiotic relationship with several of the largest comic book publishers, influencing the stories and portrayals of many superheroes and war comics. [47]

By April 1943, the WWB sent letters to numerous comic book publishers to request cooperation. The board established a Comics Committee, headed by Paul Gallico (His mother's surname was Erlich, a Jewish variant of Ehrlich) to supervise relations between the comic publishers and the WWB. [48]

Howell stated in a brief interview that while some publishers did not work with the board, the majority of comic book companies were willing accomplices of the WWB. For one, it was a patriotic obligation that would also appeal to many with patriotic sentiments as public opinion began to favor entry into the war due to propaganda and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There were also financial advantages. Wood pulp, an essential ingredient of comic books, was rationed during the war and compliance with the WWB might mean a greater supply of wood pulp and a larger supply of comics to sell. He, unsurprisingly, neglects to mention the Jewishness of the industry, except to remind us about job discrimination. Another obvious factor for compliance was the fact that they were Jewish and were angry at the Germans for their treatment of European Jewry.

In the following two years members of the committee met with publishers: notable names included DC Comics, Fawcett Publications, Parents' Magazine, Popular Comics, Standard Magazine, and Street & Smith. Publishers who cooperated would write stories based on the propositions of the WWB and to instill particular values, such as representations of ethnicity, race and other topics related to the war. This included both positive depictions of multiple races and ethnicities within America or of Allied powers, and negative depictions of races or ethnicities of the Axis powers, depending on the period of the war. [49]

WWB propaganda paradoxically demonized racial and ethnic characteristics of the enemy while it simultaneously encouraged racial tolerance back home, along with anti-fascist values and post-war international cooperation. [50] In contrast to the ethnic homogeneity of the fascists (or most of non-fascist Europe for that matter), the WWB promoted a pernicious multiculturalism, and now that the homogeneity and eugenic policies of the Nazis were forever smeared by propaganda, any U.S. citizen advocating anything remotely similar would be besmirched. Such was the power of Allied propaganda and the vociferous minions of "democratic values." [51] The board had stated, "Many of its messages can be very effectively put over in the comics magazines, [including] combating race hatred, preaching necessity for the United Nations cooperation and unity here at home." [52]

The WWB also had a Race Hatred Committee working in tandem with the Comics Committee. They appealed to a few of the comic book publishers to create stories extolling the contributions of non-whites within American culture. [53]

As the Japanese and Germans continued to endure, the late 1944 portrayals of the two countries became more dehumanizing and stereotypical: the race and ethnicity of both were attacked in support of a policy of total war. [54] At first it was common to at least present the civilians as powerless and without responsibility for the military or government, but in time, all Germans and Japanese were presented as irredeemable, even evil. All Germans were Nazis (now the ultimate evil and an embodiment of what Jews are worried whites will become if they're allowed to maintain their majority and identity and think for themselves) and all Japanese belonged to a race of bloodthirsty savages. [55] It was evidently seen as a necessity for the extirpation of fascism and to ensure a peaceful post-war world (That is, the soulless globalism and liberalism we're now seeing in the western world).  

The comic book publishers were less extreme than the WWB. DC Comics had actually scripted a story that solely blamed the German leaders and not the German people, but Barach rejected their script. WWB board members changed the script to reflect that "the German people have willingly cooperated with their leaders, rather than being unwilling dupes,’’ implicating all Germans and "Germanness." [56]

The WWB wrote the issue of All-Star Comics #24 (1945) for DC Comics, conflating the four horseman of the apocalypse with the Nazis. In part, it was illustrated by Joe Kubert, best known for Sgt. Rock and Hawkman, a Jewish immigrant of Polish origins. [57] In the comic, the Germans are presented as inherently violent, not just in the modern context, but all the way back to the Teutonic Knights. A character in the comic says of the Germans, "Until their mad ideal of world conquest is broken forever, Germany will always be an aggressor nation. Well, if they want total war, we'll give it to them!" Furthermore, the WWB member Clifton Fadiman had this to say about the Germans: "justified in destruction for their aggrandizement." [58]

It went beyond their defeat in the war: German society had to be destroyed, deprogrammed, and reeducated, and following this, the world would be regulated by a world organization devoted to conflict resolution by peaceful means. [59]

WWB Chairman Rex Stout published an article titled "We Shall Hate or We Shall Fall" in the New York Times on January 1943, stating:

I hate all Nazi Germans... I hate all Germans who, reluctant to join the Nazis, nevertheless failed, through lack of courage or conviction, to prevent the Nazis from seizing power... If we do not hate the Germans now, we shall inevitably fail in our purpose to establish the world on the basis of peace. [60]

Unsurprisingly, the WWB supported the botched Morgenthau Plan, calling for the deindustrialization and forced agrarianization of Germany. From the WWB also emerged the Society for the Prevention of World War III, helmed by Stout, with close to at least a third of its prominent members being Jewish, and pushing for a harsh peace for Germany, potentially leading to the execution of a million Germans drawn from the Nazi party and military leaders. [61]

Though the portrayal of the Germans was dehumanizing, there were times where at least the civilian population was regarded in a more positive light, on the other hand, the Japanese never received such a concession, often being portrayed as animalistic or devilish in their features. [62]

Superman, Batman, and Captain America, amongst others, had Nazis as villains during WWII and subplots concerning the war. Captain Marvel fought Captain Nazi. Captain America, created by Jews Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, had as his archnemesis the Nazi agent Red Skull. Captain America even had an Einstein stand-in, Dr. Reinstein, inject him with a serum that gave him his super-strength. There was also the Boy Commandos comic strip, where children foiled the plots of Hitler. 

First Issue of Captain America, released in March 1, 1941, several months before the U.S. entered the war. 

Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini—at least this one was in 1943.

Is that Cat Boy in the back?

Constant pressure to buy war bonds and stamps can be seen here and below.

It's important to note that this tendency for comic book creators began before the U.S. even entered the war or were attacked at Pearl Harbor—most of the palpable tension between the U.S. and Axis powers was with Japan, yet the Nazis and Hitler were the primary targets of comic book writers.

The war created a demand for an excess of entertainment to consume, after all, and the circulation of comic books tripled from 1940 to 1945. [63]

While some comic books writers/artists were drafted into the military, the majority of them didn't experience combat, instead using their skills honed in the comic industry to churn out Allied propaganda. [64]

It's also worth noting again that the comic industry was not only disproportionately Jewish, but many of them were also recent immigrants from Europe. Not only was there the ethnic identity they shared, but many of them were also only recently transplanted from the affairs of Europe.

Jonathan D. Sarna and Jonathan Golden:

In 1900, more than 40 percent of America's Jews were newcomers, with ten years or less in the country, and the largest immigration wave still lay ahead. Between 1900 and 1924, another 1.75 million Jews would immigrate to America's shores, the bulk from Eastern Europe.

When Hitler rose to power, there was the Anti-Nazi Boycott of 1933, conducted by Jews internationally, with a sizable proportion being from the U.S. The Jews in particular were pro-war because of an ethnocentric concern for worldwide Jewry. 

Post-1945 comics shifted to becoming more anti-war. Perhaps that's because of the nuclear anxiety of the Cold War for most and a liberalizing trend in regards to war. Being that the comic industry was majority Jewish, can the reason for its waning jingoism be attributed to Jews' lack of desire to wage wars related to non-Jewish interests, or Jewish sympathies for communism (which was a part of most serious U.S. engagements until the end of the Cold War, though in time, Jews left behind communism, in favor of neoliberalism), a movement founded by Jewish intelligentsia? After all, the bulk of the CPUSA and other homegrown communist and socialist movements were disproportionately Jewish, and the McCarthy hearings were targeting suspected communists—a proxy for Jewishness.  

Horror Comics and Social Justice

Max Gaines eventually left DC Comics and founded his own company, going by a few different names over the years: Educational Comics, Entertaining Comics, or EC Comics. From the 1940s to the mid 1950s, the company mostly featured genre work like sci-fi or horror, instead of superheroes; as well as comics based on the bible or other such topics as part of the Educational Comics line. Max Gaines died and left the family business to his son, William Gaines, along with Al Feldstein, another Jew, took the company in a new direction by the 1950s, with titles like The Crypt of Terror, Tales from the Crypt, and The Vault of Horror. These stories were often more controversial than other comics, featuring topics such as racism and anti-semitism. [65] 

A clear example of Jewish social justice making its way into Weird Fantasy #18, was a story called Judgment Day (The comic strip can be read in its entirety here):

What set EC apart from its competitors was a commitment to moral themes. Story lines often dealt with the evils of abusive relationships, misguided patriotism, and racism. In writer Al Feldstein's "Judgment Day" (from Weird Fantasy #18, March / April 1953), for example, an Earth astronaut named Tarlton is sent to the planet Cybrinia to judge whether its robot inhabitants are socially and technologically advanced enough to join the Earth's Galactic Republic. Determining that Cybrinia is a segregated society (the orange robots consign the blue robots to economic discrimination and ghettos), Tarlton decides that Cybrinia cannot be part of the Republic until its people, like those on Earth, have learned to live together without discrimination. When Tarlton returns to his space-ship, he removes his helmet, and we see that he is a handsome Black man, "...the beads of perspiration on his dark skin twinkling like distant stars...." This O. Henry-style twist ending, typical of EC's horror and sci-fi stories, presaged the morality tales of later TV shows such as Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Star Trek.

Another prime example is the ridiculous "Hate!" (the link has the full comic strip) from SuspenStories #5 (October-November 1952). The story in question was written by Al Feldstein and illustrated by Wally Wood. The cover, with a man lynched, who appears to have white skin, is possibly a reference to the Jewish Leo Frank, responsible for having murdered Mary Phagan—an intensive manipulation of the facts has led many to believe he was innocent.

In "Hate!", John Smith—note the highly generic gentile name and the WASP-styling of the character—assists his anti-semitic friends to drive his new Jewish neighbors out of town. Telling them to leave isn't enough; they beat the Jewish man up, and later set the couple's house on fire, killing them both inadvertently. He feels his actions to be proper until his gentile mother reveals John is actually a Jewish adoptee. His friends, upon finding out, turn on him, pressure him to leave the neighborhood,  and beat him up, just like the man earlier in the story.

Another example is a rare instance (for the time) where a character announces his Jewishness. Usually comic artists, even Jewish ones, would draw their characters to resemble the gentile majority and avoid themes that were too overtly Jewish. EC Comics' (Educational Comics) Psychoanalysis (Yes, they actually made a comic about psychoanalyzing patients, which is a very Jewish form of therapy) is one that bucks the trend by being VERY Jewish. One of the patients is Mark Stone, who turns out to be Morris Stein, son of Israel Stein, who is suffering from symptoms due to a psychosomatic illness. He said, "We were Jewish," referring to the dropping of Judaism to "assimilate" into society, also changing their name for business purposes. His father was persecuted for religious reasons in "the old country." The dialogue continues: "The Jew by any name is hated! Why the good lord gave all the rottenness in mankind an eternal target... the Jew! I remember how the other kids treated me... threw stones at me..." His Jewish mother's speech, accent, and apparel all made him "squirm." [66]

Mad Magazine

Allegedly, to distract from the lurid horror comics they were producing, Gaines, along with the Jew Harvey Kurtzman, debuted Mad Magazine, a book of political satire and Yiddishisms. Other Jews include Al Feldstein as a longtime editor following Kurtzman as editor, Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, Mort Drucker, Arnie Kogen, Frank Jacobs, and many others. [67]

Mad Magazine lampooned many events throughout the years; not long after the magazine was founded, the Army-McCarthy hearings were in progress and Harvey Kurtzman, the editor of Mad Magazine at the time, parodied the event in issue #17's "What's My Shine!" (a pun on David Schine's surname) These hearings must have been of great interest to the Jews, for he alleged many influential people were communist subversives, and he also leveled these claims at the army. Communists in the U.S. and those convicted of espionage during the period were disproportionately Jewish. Just look at Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Harry Gold, Morris Cohen, David Greenglass, Theodore Hall, George Koval, among others. [68]

Was Kurtzman's Jewish ethnicity a factor?

Al Jaffee, who was an illustrator for Mad Magazine, had this to say:

“Yeah, I think that for Jews of my generation especially, social consciousness came naturally for those of us who suffered from a lack of civil rights and were discriminated against,” said Al Jaffee. “Social consciousness really is in a way self-serving. Because by being in favor of civil rights, for example, in a like way you’re really saying, ‘Jews have suffered without civil rights for so many centuries that we know what not having civil rights is, so we cannot possibly impose this on someone else, not to have civil rights.’ I think it’s a gut reaction; I don’t think either Harvey Kurtzman or I or anybody who works in the entertainment business—comedians, writers—sit down and say, ‘I owe something to society.’ Basically, we’re trying to be funny, and a good source of humor is the stupidities in society, and certainly bigotry is one of the biggest stupidities. And Jews have experienced it firsthand and they know how stupid it is, so we go after it.” [69]

The Comics Code Authority and Censorship

Though comics were a multimillion-dollar business by the 1940s, there was controversy that comics had harmful effects upon children. [70]

Much is made of the rather unimportant event of book burnings in Nazi Germany, but it also happened on some occasions in the U.S., and there are news papers from the time and pictures showing gatherings of people burning comic books.

The Association of Comic Magazine Publishers (ACMP) was founded in 1948 as a way to curb some of the more obscene content found in comics that was believed by much of the populace to be harmful to children or induce juvenile delinquent behavior. ACMP issued the Publishers Code in response—reminiscent of the Hays Code for Hollywood. In the above hyperlink is a list of the restrictions, but in short, the code sought to remove obscene/sexual content, reduce or limit scenes of violence or sadism, and to refrain from portraying bad things in a glamorous or romantic fashion. The ACMP was ultimately unsuccessful.

Fredric Wertham, who was Jewish and a psychiatrist (and although many details about him are not very relevant to the topic at hand, it's worth noting that he was a subversive element hellbent on ending segregation—his research was used to demonstrate the "detrimental effects" of segregation in the Brown v. Board of Education court case, and he possessed most of the typical leftist views of today), was an outspoken critic of comic books, along with other influential groups like the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Legion, and the Catholic National Organization for Decent Literature. Wertham wrote The Seduction of the Innocent, a book that suggested comic books, especially the new batch of horror comics and graphic, mean-spirited crime comics, were having a negative influence on children—he theorized the effect was so great it might even contribute to anti-social behavior in children, such as crime or even murder. He detailed case studies about children who had read violent crime or horror fiction and committed criminal acts. Of course, this kind of violent media was not so wide-spread to children and so easily available prior to the 20th century; therefore, this was a nascent period for such studies, and it's unlikely he considered that they might simply be drawn to these violent comics because they themselves were violent, rather than the comics being a serious causal factor.  He even referred to Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman as closeted gay and lesbian superheroes, amusingly (and maybe even accurately) enough. [71]

There is, however, more than a grain of truth to what Wertham was saying. While children are not likely to commit criminal acts based on what they were exposed to in comic books, for this is sanctioned by society and is obviously morally repugnant; but that positive portrayal of bad behavior or less than desirable circumstances, such as drug abuse (even if this is illicit, it can be argued that this is not harming anyone directly), promiscuous sex, adultery, divorce, single motherhood, etc, can be reframed as more acceptable, leading to the youth inundated with this content in books, movies, comics, television, and whatever else, more likely to engage in these behaviors that are either normalized or presented as exciting and rebellious, thus further destabilizing society—and one only has to look at the state of society of the 1940s-1950s and compare it to today to build a strong case for this. 

CMAA representatives and Charles Murphy revealed at a press conference that his office had screened 285 different comic books, rejecting 126 stories and 5,656 drawings. [72]

This would be decried as censorship now (1st Amendment is really meant to be applied mostly to political speech and doesn't necessarily apply to violence, nudity, and poor values in mass-produced entertainment), but obscenity laws have historically been quite common, and it especially makes sense if children have easy access to the material which is deemed a bad influence. 

While Wertham's book is dated and of little value today, it is interesting to see the visual examples of what was in some of the more mature comics of the time. They can be found on pages 230-245.

Arie Kaplan and other sources allege that this backlash against comic books was a result of anti-semitism, and given most of these creators WERE Jewish, I suppose there may be some truth to this assertion. Anti-semitism, as is almost always the case for every historical incident where people are smeared as anti-semites, isn't an irrational hatred or something to be pathologized, but it's almost always a gentile's response to naughty Jewish behavior.

Kaplan cites a Hartford Courant editorial as stating "the filthy stream that flows from the gold-plated sewers of New York," which is a supposed code phrase to refer to a Jewish business. Yeah, that's probably true.

In response to Wertham and many concerned citizens, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency began an investigation on the effects of mass media by starting with comic books. Senators staged hearings in New York City on April 21-22 and June 4, 1954, calling a number of witnesses to testify.

Among the Witnesses was William Gaines of EC Comics who was questioned by senator Estes Kefauver over whether or not a Johnny Craig (doesn't seem to be a Jew, but the artists often weren't) cover 
with a severed head and a bloody axe was in good taste.

During one instance of the hearings, Gaines reaffirmed his comics were

being used for "positive" influences to reduce anti-semitism and racism (p. 100).

Mr. BEASER: . . . You used the pages of your comic book to send across a message, in this case it was against racial prejudice; is that it?”

Mr. GAINES: That is right.

 
Mr. BEASER. You think, therefore, you can get across a message to the kids through the medium of your magazine that would lessen racial prejudice; is that it?

 
Mr. GAINES. By specific effort and spelling it out very carefully so that the point won’t be missed by any of the readers, and I regret to admit that it still is missed by some readers, as well as Dr. Wertham ─ we have, I think, achieved some degree of success in combating anti-Semitism, anti-Negro feeling, and so forth.

The publicity for the hearing and Gaines responses were a travesty for EC Comics.

Arie Kaplan:

"The media jumped on that," says MAD cartoonist Drew Friedman of the televised hearings. "It was so unfair. They portrayed him as some slovenly Jewish pornographer."

The Comic Magazine Association of America (CMAA) assembled in 1954, consisting of all the major comic book publishers. Gaines tried to rally other publishers to reject this measure, but most of them wanted a quick solution so profits could continue as usual. With the situation bleak for Gaines and his company, he begrudgingly joined the CMAA, which advocated for a regulatory seal to be emblazoned onto the comics. With the exception of Dell Comics and Classics Illustrated, wholesalers would not accept comics without the seal. 

"Approved by the Comics Code Authority" was what the seal added to comics said—the Comics Code Authority (CCA) being the regulatory arm of the CMAA.

Horror and crime novels soon fell out of favor (An exception would be the black and white horror comics that managed to get around the code, such as the Creepy horror anthology, debuting in the 1960s, among other titles) the restrictions were so great, the words "horror" and "terror" were banned from being in the title of the comic, the  “walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism” were disallowed. There were restrictions on the female form as well: "females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.” The Comics Code went beyond the most explicit of content found in horror and crime comics, even down to altering slang. 

Gaines EC Comics went defunct and he focused his attention on Mad Magazine—changing it from a comic to a magazine to avoid dealing with the code. Other lesser-known comic companies also folded at this time, although this event coincided with televisions' growing popularity, another factor that may have led to the depressed growth and dissolution of publishers in the comic industry.

CBLDF:

According to David Hajdu in The 10-Cent Plague, the work for cartoonists dried up, with the number of titles published dropping from 650 titles in 1954 to 250 in 1956. The consequence was that more than 800 working creators lost their jobs. The commercial rejection of comics and the business altering restrictions of the Code were still not enough for some critics. Hajdu writes: “More than a hundred acts of legislation were introduced on the state and municipal levels to ban or limit the sale of comics: Scores of titles were outlawed in New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and other states, and ordinances to regulate comics were passed in dozens of cities.”

A 1971 revision allowed more classical horror themes to be revisited and lifted some restrictions on crime comics. Stan Lee, the Jewish co-creator of Spider-Man (co-creator Steve Ditko was a gentile) bragged the same year about how they had defied the Comics Code Authority by publishing a Spider-Man story arc focusing on drugs. By the 1970s and 1980s the Code was mostly used by publishers such as Archie, Marvel, Harvey, and DC, and the Code's power continued to diminish over the years, with many companies not using it at all, instead favoring their own internal rating systems.  

Part 3: The Silver Age of Comics

The Silver Age is thought to have started after the Comics Code Authority had their way and influential voices, such as Wertham, denounced comics for their supposed promotion of anti-social behavior. Arie Kaplan sets the period as ranging from 1956-1978.

Crime and horror novels were either phased out of existence or toned down to pale imitations of what they once where, and superhero comics became sillier due to certain restrictions being a bit draconian. 

Though now neutered, perhaps, comics were just as Jewish as ever. DC Comics revamped Flash and Green Lantern. The Jews Julius Schwartz and Gil Kane (née Eli Katz), along with John Broome (I couldn't find any evidence myself, but Kaplan thinks he's a Jew; I'm skeptical, however), unveiled a much larger universe for Green Lantern, now with hundreds of new identically costumed heroes, each from a different planet—who were guardians of the galaxy, keeping interplanetary peace; seemingly a nod to the UN. [73]

Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern from earth, was modeled after the Jew Paul Newman (on the father's side, but that's good enough for me), and the blue men who presided over the Green Lantern Corp were designed to resemble David Ben-Gurion, a former Israeli prime minister.

Kaplan claims Broome often used the series to promote racial tolerance. The 1961 story “The Battle of the Power Rings!” from Green Lantern (second series) #9, in a kind of reverse Tower of Babel scenario, we have this piece of dialogue/narration: “Yet despite their diversity, all the Green Lanterns are highly intelligent and equally adept at projecting their thought to overcome the language barrier.” Supposedly the intergalactic diversity is a reflection of Broome's desire for multicultural societies. [74]

The Justice League, a task force with many popular DC heroes, such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc, also had its debut in the 1960s, and in response to this was The Marvel Age (1961-1978), when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Fantastic Four, a series that supposedly had more complex characters who feuded with each other often.

Kaplan asserts that Ben, alternatively know as the Thing, who had rocky skin and immense strength, "became a metaphor for Jews and other minority outsiders who faced discrimination because of their skin color or ethnic roots." 

Fantastic Four #91, with the "The Thing Enslaved" emblazoned over the front, brings to mind black slavery, especially if one envisions Grimm as a minority.

Jack Kirby even had a drawing of Ben decked out in rabbinical garb. holding a torah, and a menorah burning away behind him.

In Fantastic Four #56 (Volume 3) Ben Grimm is revealed to be Jewish. This particular volume actually applies to the Bronze Age, but I decided to include it here because Fantastic Four's prime was in the Silver Age, and I'd prefer to not skip around any more than I already have.

The story involves Grimm trying to return a Star of David to Mr. Sheckerberg, which he had stolen as part of a gang initiation. Sheckerberg wishes for him to keep it. When Sheckerberg is wounded, Grimm prays in butchered Hebrew. I don't feel it's necessary to flesh out the details any further, but many stills and a full summary can be found on Adherents.

Spider-Man was among the most popular of Marvel's comic series. Similar to the transformed Captain America, the wimpy nerd Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider endowing him with super strength and other abilities.

Michael Chabon said in an issue of Newsweek “I don’t think there’s another comic book super-hero that’s as completely driven by trying to pay some debt, a debt that can’t be paid, as Spider-Man is. For years people have speculated that Peter was sort of crypto-Jewish.” He points out that he lives with Uncle Ben and Aunt May in Queens. family members with Old World names, the lower class, outer borough locale are subtextual Jewish signifiers. [75]

Much is made of the nebbishness of Spider-Man and other Jewish-created characters, including other comic heroes like Superman as his Clark Kent persona, Steve Rogers (Captain America), but also of weak, nerdy, underdog characters who are picked on by their peers in other genres or mediums, as opposed to the more naturally heroic and strong characters you would tend to see in the past from gentile creators. "The child of first generation Slovakian immigrants, Peter Parker is (one more time) a nebbishy, scrawny, bespectacled, brainy Jewish/immigrant stereotype." Parker isn't popular with his classmates or anyone really, although the exact reason is never made clear. The Forward proposes it's a potential metaphor for anti-semitism and attempts to assimilate. Despite Spider-Man's good deeds, he's seen as an outsider and demonized by the press. "Spider-Man is not explicitly Jewish in the early comics, but he is hated as if he were Jewish. Certain kinds of people, for unspoken reasons, are never accepted as heroes." [76]

Of the emerging titles, the most interesting parallel is probably X-Men, a series that has been likened to the civil rights movement, this time for mutants (a clear stand in for either Jews or other minorities), Professor Xavier and Magneto corresponding with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, respectively; Xavier wanted mutants and humans to co-exist peacefully, while Magneto was a "mutant supremacist." 

Bolivar Trask, an anthropologist, says of the mutants, "Mutants Walk among us! Hidden! Unknown! Waiting—! Waiting for their moment to strike!" Sounds a lot like crypto-Jews, if you ask me... [77]

Trask felt mutants were a threat to humanity and created the Sentinels to hunt down people with mutant DNA. Obviously, this is evocative of eugenics—in America's past there were programs dedicated to eugenics, but this became taboo following WWII, and the country instead... largely turned to dysgenics. The sentinels come to see themselves as superior to humans as well and desire to rule the world.

Magneto was even retconned later on as a holocaust survivor, most dramatically in the film franchise. Chris Claremont was responsible for this change, along with the addition of fellow holocaust survivor Gabrielle Haller; the Jewish Kitty Pryde, sometimes featured with a Star of David

Don't forget about the masturbation machines and the cage with the bear and the eagle.

Magneto visits a holocaust museum.

Vulture:

and the time [hints about Magneto's Jewishness are revealed/reaffirmed] in Uncanny No. 211 when he hears that the mutants known as the Morlocks are to be exterminated and he cries, “No! The horrors of my childhood, born again, only this time, mutants are the victims, instead of Jews.”

Jack Kirby left Marvel Comics and rejoined DC Comics in 1970, leading to the creation of Fourth World, which was an interconnected series of 4 different comics. The Jew Jon Bogdanov stated it was an amalgamation of different ideas relating to Nazism and the holocaust, with a "fuhrer-like" character found in the lamely named Darkseid, which was Darkside with a German-looking/sounding spelling; he compared the hellish world to the Nazis' industrial war machine, Armagetto to a Polish ghetto; and a slogan: "Work is Life, Death is Freedom," meant as an allusion to "Work sets you free," an allusion to the phrase found at Auschwitz and other camps.

Around the same time, the Underground was swamped with drugged-up, counterculture, and often feminist material made by Jews: Diane Noomin, Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman (who would go on to make Maus, where Jews are mice, and Nazis are cats), Sam Gross, Aline Kominsky, with many of their strips being published by alternative presses, such as Ron Turner's Last Gasp, Dennis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press, and Don Donahue's Apex Novelties. There was also the more quiet and mundane experiences of Harvey Pekar's life, rendered as a comic in American Splendor. 

Part 4: The Bronze Age of Comics

Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly came out with the pretentious RAW magazine, which sought to mix comic books with "high art," that is lame conceptualism and/or Jewish-styled modern art (maybe post-modern in this case). One example is the right corner of every cover page on a particular edition was torn off and clipped back on, so every issue was unique! It was also chock full of many trite SJWisms, such as Friedman's parody of The Andy Griffith Show, consisting of a black man wandering through the town and being murdered.

This magazine is also where the original tiny strip of Maus was published for the second time, before it was expanded into a graphic novel.

Maus is an ordinary enough take on the holocaust, except it swaps the different ethnic groups out. Polish people are pigs, Americans are dogs, Jews are mice, and Germans are cats!

In further overt explorations of anti-semitism, Will Eisner created Fagin the Jew, a 2003 graphic novel and reimagining of Dickens' Oliver Twist, told from the perspective of Fagin as Eisner attempts to humanize him by providing a backstory involving gentiles that wrong him as a child. There's also Yossel: April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert, also from 2003, exploring the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with Jews around him being sent to camps.

For a more thorough look at Jews depicting the holocaust or closely related topics in comics, look no further than We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust by Neal Adams, Rafael Medoff, and Craig Yoe, which chronicles 18 comic books addressing the holocaust, starting in 1951 with Desert Fox, penned by Harvey Kurtzman, best known for creating the Mad comic book. Other titles include a 1969 issue of Marvel Man about a dictator and another one depicting Batman and Robin up against a holocaust survivor who is thirsty for revenge.

Characters who weren't explicitly Jewish are retconned as Jewish and Jewish references are far more overt during this period of comic history—primary examples being Magneto and Ben Grimm/the Thing. 

When examining Gold, Silver, and the Bronze Age of Comics, it's evident Jews went from being very careful to hide their Jewishness and attempted to appeal only to gentile sensibilities, but they relaxed this over time. 

Clearly as Jews become more powerful, they're more willing to show their identity and express Jewish themes, until it gets to the point that the weight of the holocaust oozes from the ink of every other page, and we become inundated with Jewish subtextual cues to mold our beliefs, to make us think we should see the world the way they see it. 

After all, they've built up a liberal ideology—an egalitarian religion—that demonizes ethnocentricity for whites and any degree of racism, and these themes run through the bloodstream of popular culture, to the extent that immigrants are now flooding the U.S. everyday and whites will be a minority in their own country before long. But as long as Jews can live in their own ethnic and private communities, there's no reason for them to care; in fact they welcome the demise of their old foe, the European.

NOTES

[1]: Eric Leif Davin, Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (Lexington Books, 2006), p. 175.

[2]: Ibid.

[3]: R. M. McCleary (ed), The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 68.

[4]: Marc Dollinger, Quest for Inclusion (Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 143.

[5]: Ibid., p. 206, 282.

[6]: Ibid., p. 259.

[7]: Ibid., p. 147.

[8]: Aldo J. Regalado, Bending Steel: Modernity and the American Superhero (University Press of Mississippi / Jackson, 2015), ch. 3.

[9]: Ibid. 

[10]: I'm actually seeing several different dates for the different series, but the important point is that they were released in 1934. 

[11]: Davin, Partners in Wonder, p. 163-192. 

[12]: Regalado, Bending Steel, ch. 3.

[13]: Davin, Partners in Wonder, p. 163-192.

[14]: Hubert Gordon Green and Hames Ware, "Dell Comics Were Good Comics!," Along the Autobahn, the Silk Road, and the Inca Trail: A Sort-of-a Memoir (Amber Sand Press, 2016). 

[15]: Davin, Partners in Wonder, p. 163-192.

[16]: Green and Ware, "Dell Comics Were Good Comics!" 

[17]: M. Keith Booker, Comics Through Time: A History of  Icons, Idols, and Ideas (ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2014), Vol. 1, p. 250-251. 

[18]: Sebastian T. Mercier, “The Whole Furshlugginer Operation”: The Jewish Comic Book Industry, 1933-1954 (Michigan State University, 2018), p. 151-152.

[19]: Ibid.

[20]: Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (New York: Basic Books, 2004) as quoted in Matthew J. Costello, Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America (The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, 2009), p. 18. While I have access to the exact same edition of Jones' Men of Tomorrow, Costello's provided page number, 29, did not provide the quote, and perusing the index failed to yield any results. It's my assumption that this quote is actually in Jones' book, but Costello made an error. 

[21]: Booker, Comics Through Time, Vol. 1, p. 250-251.

[22]: Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (New York: Basic Books, 2004), p. 44-105.

[23]: Ibid., p. 8-9, 43-45.

[24]: Ibid., p. 45.

[25]: Lewis Aron and Karen Starr, A Psychotherapy for the People: Toward a Progressive Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 2013) , p. 167.

[26]: Ibid.

[27]: Ibid.

[28]: Mercier, “The Whole Furshlugginer Operation”, p. 4.

[29]: Christopher Murray, Champions of the Oppressed?: Superhero Comics, Popular Culture, and Propaganda in America During World War II (New Jersey: Hampton Press, 2011), p. 19.

[30]: Arie Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2008), p. 42-43.

[31]: William W. Savage Jr., Comic Books and America 1945-1954 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), p. 10, 14.

[32]: Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton, p. 58.

[33]: Murray, Champions of the Oppressed?, p. 51-52.

[34]: Richard W. Steele, “The Great Debate: Roosevelt, the Media, and the Coming of the War, 1940-1941,” in The Journal of American History, Vol. 71 (Indiana: Organization of American Historians, 1984-1985), p. 70.

[35]:  William L. Bird Jr. and Harry R. Rubinstein, Design for Victory: World War II Posters on the American Home Front (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), p. 9.; Murray, Champions of the Oppressed?, p. 52,

[36]: Murray, Champions of the Oppressed?, p. 52-53.

[37]: Ibid., p. 55-56.

[38]: Ibid., p. 67

[39]: Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, “What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945”, The Journal of American History, Vol. LXIV (Indiana: Organisation of American Historians, 1977), p. 88.

[40]: James J. Kimble and Trischa Goodnow, "Introduction," in The 10 Cent War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II, p. 5. Murray, Champions of the Oppressed?, p. 69.

[41]: Paul Hirsch, "This is Our Enemy," in Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 3 (University of California Press, 2014), p. 454.

[42]: Ibid., p. 449.

[43]: Ibid., p. 451, 454-455.

[44]: Thomas Howell, ‘‘The Writers’ War Board: U.S. Domestic Propaganda in World War II,’’ Historian, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Summer 1997) p. 795-800. 

[45]: Ibid., p. 795.

[46]: Ibid., p. 799.

[47]: Ibid., p. 796; Hirsch, Vol. 83, p. 455.

[48]: Ibid., 456. 

[49]: Ibid.

[50]: Ibid., p. 451, 454-455.

[51]: Ibid., p. 452. 

[52]: Ibid., p. 455-456.

[53]: Ibid., p. 475.

[54]: Ibid., p. 460.

[55]: Ibid., p. 460-461.

[56]: Ibid., p. 463.

[57]: Ibid., p. 449.

[58]: Ibid., p. 463.

[59]: Ibid., p. 464.

[60]: Rex Stout, "We Shall Hate or We Shall Fail," New York Times, January 17, 1943, p. 6.

[61]: Steven Casey, "The Campaign to Sell a Harsh Peace for Germany to the American Public, 1944-1948," History, Vol. 90, No. 297, p. 62-66. When going by this particular web version, the page numbers will be 1-5; Howell, Vol. 59, p. 807.

[62]: Hirsch, Vol. 83, p. 464.

[63]: Les Daniels, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1995), p. 64; Mercier, “The Whole Furshlugginer Operation”, p. 138.

[64]: Mercier, “The Whole Furshlugginer Operation”, p. 139.

[65]: Aron and Starr, A Psychotherapy for the People, p. 168.

[66]: Ibid., p. 173.

[67]: Ibid., p. 168.

[68]: Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton, p. 73-74.

[69]: Ibid.

[70]: Aron and Starr, A Psychotherapy for the People, p. 168.

[71]: Ibid.

[72]: Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 174.

[73]: Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton, p. 87.

[74]: Ibid., p. 90-91.

[75]: Ibid., p. 102-103.

[76]: To many, the musings of Berlatsky may sound like a load of tripe (I'm not saying it isn't). Many of the commenters on The Forward certainly think it is. The same can perhaps be said of some of the other speculation found throughout my article and among some of the quotes I have added. I'm not always fully convinced of it myself, either. There's the idea of "subconscious seepage," where a person writes material that has an apparent subtext they may not have consciously mapped out, but its presence becomes overwhelming in time. Authorial intent is not of the utmost necessity, however. Most literary criticism is a result of interpretation removed from the author's approval. 

[77]: Kaplan, From Krakow to Krypton, p. 113.