Writer Arie Kaplan is doing a series for Reform Judaism magazine on "How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry." Which they pretty much did. The first chapter, which I linked to some time ago, can be read here. The second part, which just came out, can be read here. Both include some interesting observations and an intriguing context, but a few facts are askew. Chris Claremont, for example, was not picked to revamp X-Men in 1975. Len Wein was, and he did most of the initial upgrade before Chris took over. Also, it's implied that the "Silver Age" revamp of Flash came after Green Lantern, when it was actually three years before, and that the Jewish Robert Kanigher was the main writer. Actually, Kanigher only wrote four of the early stories. That's kind of the problem I have with the series. Kaplan is essentially right about the role of Jews in comics, but he overstates the case by, for example, singling out the Jewish Kanigher as the writer of Flash, and not the non-Jews, John Broome and Gardner Fox, who wrote most of the Flash scripts. He also omits non-Jew Carmine Infantino, who drew them all and who was arguably the most important member of the creative crew. An incredible percentage of movers and shakers in the comic book field were Jewish but it wasn't quite as lopsided as Kaplan makes it out to be.
(Another slightly-misleading point in the second chapter: Steve Trevor was not added to the Wonder Woman comic because Dr. Fredric Wertham suggested the title character was a lesbian. That's not exactly what Doc Wertham said, and Steve Trevor had been a fixture of the strip for more than a decade before, anyway.)
Despite these quibbles, I'm enjoying the articles and I hope Kaplan expands his overview and turns it into a book.
Also of interest but not online is a letter in the latest issue of Reform Judaism. It's from Irwin Donenfeld, whose father was the founder of DC Comics. Irwin himself served as…well, I'm a little fuzzy on Irwin's titles because my understanding doesn't match what he says below, but he was certainly one of the main executives at the company for a long period. Here is his letter, as retyped by Don Porges, who let me know about it…
This is the true story of Siegel and Shuster. Dad decided to take a chance on a comic character that no one else wanted. Vince Sullivan, Dad's editor, cut up the panels made for newspaper syndication. It came out to thirteen pages, and at $10 a page it was more than the going rate, and easy money for the boys. They were paid for their artwork when no other publisher wanted it. In 1938, $130 was a lot of money. Dad paid for the first issue of Action, and the second issue at the printers, and the third issue on the way to the engraver, before he found out if Superman would sell. He had a lot of money riding on his hunch. I was the first kid in the country to read Superman, and in the original art.
After Superman became an enormous hit, Dad got it into newspaper syndication. After all the expenses were paid, all of the profit went to Siegel and Shuster. Dad kept none of it. they were far and away the best-paid artists in comic books. Despite this, and at the urging of a lawyer, they decided to sue dad for the rights to Superman and Superboy. In a settlement directed by the judge, they gave up all rights to Superboy (they never had any for Superman) and in return they each received $125,000. It didn't take them too many years to run through all their money. No one else would hire them. Toward the end, Joe Shuster needed an eye operation, but he didn't have the money to pay for it. Dad paid for his operation.
In 1948, after college and a stint in the Air Force, I went to work at DC. In 1954, I became editor-in-chief. In 1956, DC president Jack Liebowitz made me publisher. We built up our circulation to more than eight million copies (average) a month. We were the largest comic book publisher in the industry. One day Mr. Liebowitz called me into his office and told me Jerry Siegel was in financial trouble. He had a wife and a child, and he was broke. Despite the fact that he had sued us and caused us all kinds of trouble, Mr. Liebowitz asked me to hire him, which I did. All the time that I was there, until 1968, he always had work.
I like Irwin but some of the above is at odds with the facts as I've heard them. Jerry Siegel was certainly hired by others after leaving Superman and so was Joe Shuster, as long as his eyesight permitted. Siegel and Shuster won their lawsuit for Superboy, then sold those rights to DC for a dollar figure that has always been reported as much lower than what Irwin reports. It's true that DC gave Siegel work in the late fifties when he needed it but all records say that his employment there ceased in 1966, and when I first met him in '68, that's what he told me. There are other points and I've generally found Irwin to be accurate, but I have to note when his recollections do not coincide with others. (One other trivial matter: Vince Sullivan may have "cut up" those Superman comic strip samples to form the first story in the sense that he was the guy in charge. But Vince told me that Joe Shuster and his brother did the actual conversion, with Siegel deciding what should go where.)