Highmoon's Ponderings

Up, Up, and Oy Vey!: How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero is an excellent (if quick) look at the influence of Jews, Judaism and Torah on the creation of the genre of comic books. Rabbi Simcha Weinstein is an avid collector who knows the genre, knows the history, and presents it in very digestable format based around a concept and a superhero or team of heroes that embody it. Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of the early pioneers of the comic book genre mainly because in the 30s and 40s it was one of the few jobs Jews could have in publishing, and whether consciously or not, these guys drew on their experiences as Jews (and all that entailed, from the immigrant/children of immigrants experience, to their varying levels of observance, to their place in a still anti-Semitic society) when creating the characters that would live for decades to come and become American icons. There are books that tackle the subject more in depth, but this one has the advantage of also expounding the connection to the Torah, which makes it unique in the field of Jewish publications. Any Jewish fan of comic books should get and read this book for sure.

(Taken from GM Skarka, Judd Karlman, Steve Kenson, et.al.)

Entertainment Weekly has a web article where some famous folks talk about the comic book that hooked them.

For me, it was my first American comic: The Amazing Spider-Man #300.

It was 1988, I was 13; I was at the mall with my family and I was allowed to wander off to the nearby toy store while they shopped for clothes or something. I’d gone into this store before to look at the toys, but I’d never paid attention to the area near the front where they had a bunch of comics. For some reason that day I decided to take a look over there, and this issue grabbed my attention immediately. Spider-man in black?! Awesome!

I went over to my mom and asked for $2 to buy the comic, which she gave me without any fuss (I think it’s because it was for the comic book and not for video games) and I bought my first (American) comic. Now, I’d been buying comics for a long time already, but mostly of the .25-cents funny book variety in Spanish, of which they carried a lot in the stores in Puerto Rico (as well as some comics brought over from Mexico, like Memin and Kaliman), but Spider-Man 300 was the one that truly hooked me into comics as a hobby (addiction), one that I would indulge in for about a decade after that.

These days I don’t really buy comics anymore; I’ve lost patience with the monthly format and frankly, I’m so out of touch that, every time I go to the comics store thinking about getting back in, I get so lost that I simply leave. I did start buying some trade paperbacks for Marvel’s new Ultimate line (X-Men in particular) and have enjoyed them a lot, so I have kept buying them. My friend Josh is still very much a comics addict, so I now raid his house for new stuff to read.

Funny thing is, even though I started with Spider-Man, shortly thereafter I dropped it (after the wedding issue, I believe) and made the jump to the title(s) that would become my absolute favorite to this day, X-Men.

This was a great and fun read from start to finish. I’m a sucker for re-interpretations of the classics, and from the moment I saw The Looking Glass Wars on a table at the Miami International Book Fair I knew I had to read it.

Beddor knows his stuff, and he can spin a good yarn very well. His extrapolation of Wonderland is fantastic and it feels very much like a living, breathing world. Half the fun is figuring out the supposed real source of the caricature presented by Lewis Caroll in his Wonderland books, but the other half is getting lost in the story of Alyss’s struggle to regain the throne of Wonderland from her evil aunt Redd. I’m very glad this is just the first in a projected trilogy, and I anxiously await the next installment, Seeing Redd.

Oh, and for the roleplayers out there, this world rocks as a setting for a game. Seriously.

And Scholastic has decided the happy, happy day shall be

Marks your calendars now!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out tonight and I am STOKED! I’m wearing my Hogwarts t-shirt today, and reviewing the saga up to now in my head. Tomorrow night we’re going to Borders first thing after Shabbat ends to pick up our copy of Half-Blood Prince and off to Potter-land we go!!!

I’m reading now The Da Vinci Code (and strangely enough, so is my mother-in-law) and liking it a lot. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s 100%, but as fluff goes, it’s not that horrible.

I find incredibly funny that so many Christians have had their feathers ruffled by this work of fiction. Of course, as much a work of fiction as it may be, there are some truths in there, and that’s what has people scrambling.

I’m not naive enough to take everything presented in the book as fact: I can do my own research, thank you very much. However, I am not naive enough to think that for the last 2000 years everyone in the church has been 100% honest and telling the whole truth. Ridiculous! If you truly believe that you are either possessed of an unearthly faith (and thus should be removed from this plane of reality) or incredibly stupid.

Thing is, none of the so-called great secrets revealed in the book are new to me. I have either read them before in a variety of sources, or have come up with similar ones myself. And for the record, yes, I do believe (and have believed for more than 2 years now, before the novel was published) that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. In fact, I go so far as to say that the “Beloved Disciple” of the gospel of John is indeed Mary Magdalene. You figure it out.

Is the book biased? Of course, it is a work of fiction by a man who holds a particular set of beliefs. Is everything in the book accurate? Nope, you go look it up and find out for yourself; don’t get your history from a novel (or a movie, for that matter, even if it claims to be the authoritative vision of the passion of Jesus). Are some of these theories real? Absolutely, many are documented going back centuries. Do they tell the truth? Who the hell knows. Only God knows the truth of the matter–the Truth, if you will; we humans must make due with history, what we know, and what we unearth in our constant search for an understanding of our world. But do me a favor, don’t let anyone tell you what is true or not, in this book or anywhere else. Go find out for yourself.

And remember, that just as the author had a bias, so does every single book being published right now claiming to crack, explain or debunk the Da Vinci Code: notice the majority are being published by Christian writers who cannot stand even the suggestion of such an idea as Jesus’ humanity and all that entails.

For now I’ll keep reading. I look forward to seeing how much of it is old news to me, and feel really good about it.

– Highmoon
Clamouring for people to think for themselves!