28 - Jewish American Comic Books and Graphic Novels

Summary

This chapter traces the history of Jewish American comic books and graphic novels through the successive terms and arguments formulated by critics, scholars, and comics writer-artists that helped assemble that subject category. It discusses Will Eisner's foundational work, A Contract with God, and the responses to Art Spiegelman's Maus in the 1980s and early 1990s. Moving through the late twentieth century and into the past decade, the chapter shows how the assertion of Jewish American comics focuses attention on formal and cultural innovations while also surfacing various patterns of meaning about the perceived roles and functions of Jewishness in America. It also presents examples such as Shmuel HaNagid: Nagdila: A Tale of the Golden Age and Rashi Hakadosh: A Light after the Dark Ages, to reveal why comic books and graphic novels are especially resonant examples of the formal innovations and commercial changes that describe the history of Jewish American literature and its contemporary situation.