Religion and Comic Books: Where Did Supermans Theology Come From?

[pynchonoid]

September 23, 2006
On Religion
Religion and Comic Books: Where Did Superman’s
Theology Come From?
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

When Rabbi Simcha Weinstein leads Rosh Hashanah
services this weekend at the B’nai Avraham synagogue
in Brooklyn Heights, he will read a liturgy deeply
concerned with the concept of teshuva, or repentance.
And when Rabbi Weinstein speaks of repentance, he
often thinks of a young man he met decades ago by the
name of Peter Parker.

Parker had been walking home after competing in a
wrestling match, vain in the aftermath of his victory,
and as a robber dashed past him, he did nothing. That
same robber proceeded to attack and kill Parker’s
uncle.

Coming upon the scene, the nephew was struck by such
guilt and remorse that he resolved to spend the rest
of his life fighting crime.

As any fan of comic books, including Rabbi Weinstein,
would recognize, Peter Parker is Spider-Man, created
by Stan Lee and drawn initially by Jack Kirby and then
Steve Ditko. Parker’s moment of moral awakening
occurred in the first issue of the Spider-Man strip,
published in 1962 and discovered by Rabbi Weinstein
during his own boyhood in the early 80’s.

Something else that Rabbi Weinstein came to learn much
more recently was that Lee and Kirby were Jewish —
born Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg, respectively.
So it seemed to the rabbi no accident that their comic
resonated with a quintessentially Jewish theological
theme.

That insight, among others drawn from Rabbi
Weinstein’s study of the classic superhero comics,
infuses a new book, “Up, Up and Oy Vey!” The volume,
which has nearly sold out its first run of 5,000
copies, contends that writer-artists of the classic
comics, many of them Jewish, were influenced by their
religious heritage in devising characters and plots.
[...]

...read it all:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/books/23onreligion.html?ei=5087%0A&en=768197fec5abdb26&ex=1159243200&pagewanted=print>


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