By Paul Buhle
Harvey Pekar and Tuli Kupferberg died on the same day, July 12, and shared much, including peacenik politics, a strong sense of humor and a passion to carve art out of the fragments of popular culture. But they were almost an American Jewish generation apart, a detail that now seems difficult to grasp entirely, but is still crucial.
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By Paul Buhle
Three or four generations ago, humorist Milt Gross was so famous that to avoid him and his work would have been almost impossible — especially for Jewish readers, some of whom must have winced, while others laughed aloud. With comic strips in the biggest circulation dailies, novels and parodies, not to mention a radio show based on his characters and cartoon movies under his direction, Gross was a giant in the days when comic strips were America’s television. It is testament to the transience of modern fame that this new collection arrives nearly 60 years after his death and more than half a century after he was forgotten.
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By Paul Buhle
To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the
New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis,” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
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By Paul Buhle
Who knew that Joe Shuster (1914-1992), the Cleveland Jewish teenage artist of the Depression Era, rising from obscurity through his portrayal of The Man of Steel, would become in later life a soft-porn artist? Not me, and surely not those other kids, mostly male, who grew up reading the Super-franchise heroes while developing mild fantasies about a very chaste Lois Lane.
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By Paul Buhle
In one of many ironies whose origins may be suggested here, artist-entrepreneur Will Eisner died in 2005, just as his collected oeuvre had begun to persuade readers that he was a true master and not a historical footnote to the otherwise juvenile art form known as the comic book. His most thoughtful works have posthumously appeared — or reappeared more prominently than in their original form — and a documentary about his life premiered last month. That is to say, he lived almost long enough to see a life’s work vindicated.Read More
