Look What Kavalier & Clay Hath Wrought

Did you see the notice in the Publishers Marketplace deal lunch last week for Harry Brod (right) and Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice and the Jewish-American Way. The book, which Free Press will publish in the summer of 2010, is billed as explaining how “the history of comics is the history of America and the history of Jews in comics is the history of Jews in America.”

At GalleyCat, we hold both those propositions to be true, and not just because of our longstanding admiration for Michael Chabon and David Hajdu. We’ve also got the expertise of veteran Marvel Comics editor (and mediabistro.com instructor) Danny Fingeroth, who published Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero just last fall. His PW interview (with fellow ’80s Marvel Bullpenner Peter Sanderson) hits most of the book’s thematic points, including his interest in universalizing the question—in Fingeroth’s words, his history can be defined beyond the Jewish question as exploring “the sparks that are ignited when people struggle, consciously or unconsciously, with the balance between their individual and their group identities.”

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing what Prof. Brod—a philosopher whose previous work includes a consideration of Jewish masculinity, along with other men’s studies issues—brings to this fertile discussion area.

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