Arie Kaplan, JPS author and comic guru, guest blogs for JPS with his recommendations for the best Jewish comics.

Okay. JPS asked me to compile a list of Jewish comics. But what makes a comic “Jewish”? Is it the fact that it was created by a Jewish writer and/or artist? Well, that doesn’t seem fair, does it? Because if you limit it to Jewish comics creators, you leave out so many talented non-Jewish comics creators, like Carl Barks or Alan Moore (Google them). Hmm. But what about a comic that features Jewish characters? Well…I dunno. Does that make the comic book itself somehow “Jewish”? That’s a little odd. Marvel’s X-Men titles feature characters of nearly every race, religion, and sexual orientation. Hmm…Eventually though, I have to make a choice here. So my choice is to NOT make a choice. (That sound you heard is me blowing your mind.) What I’ve done is, I’ve put together a list of either comics that are created by Jews or comics that feature Jewish content. That way, everyone’s happy. Also, I’ve stuck to trade paperbacks in my list, rather than the decidedly slimmer single-issue comics, because TPBs make better stocking stuffers (or, y’know, whatever the Hanukkah equivalent of a stocking stuffer is). Because I have limited space, I’ve picked a mere five books, but don’t think for a minute that these are the only “Jewish Comics” worth mentioning. (And yes, I know I’ve left out a ton of other contenders.) This should suffice as a good “recommended reading” list for the comic book fan on your holiday shopping list:

1. X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga, by Chris Claremont (writer) and John Byrne (penciler): I was a skinny, neurotic Jewish kid who got headaches all the time. So was she. Trouble was, I was real and she was fictional. But somehow we could make it work. Anyway, the “Dark Phoenix Saga” is the X-Men story arc that made me fall in love with Katherine “Kitty” Pryde. And before you laugh at me for lusting after a fictional character, ask yourself how many times you drooled over Wilma Flintstone. What? None of you? Well, uh…neither did I. Moving on…

2. The Sandman: The Wake, by Neil Gaiman (writer), Michael Zulli (artist), Jon J. Muth (artist), Charles Vess (artist): You’d be hard-pressed to find a better meditation on death, dying, and the mourning process than this final story arc in Gaiman’s acclaimed Sandman series. Everything comes full circle in “The Wake,” as the various supporting characters react to the title character’s demise. Perhaps my favorite chapter: “Sunday Mourning,” featuring the immortal Hob Gadling.

3. The New American Splendor Anthology, by Harvey Pekar (writer), Drew Friedman (artist), Frank Stack (artist), Gerry Shamray (artist), Robert Crumb (artist), Alan Moore (artist), and more: Pekar is the king of the autobiographical comics movement, and has been for well over thirty years. Many of the stories in this volume will show you why. In the story “Pa-ayper Reggs!!”, about Jewish rag peddlers in the 1920s, Pekar and artist Robert Crumb conjure up a New York of chocolate phosphates and horse-drawn wagons, a city with one foot firmly planted in the new world and one foot still languishing in the old. Good stuff.

4. The Essential Howard the Duck Volume 1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Gene Colan (artist), Frank Brunner (artist), Sal Buscema (artist), Val Mayerik (artist), and more: Oh sure, laugh. Laugh because the only version of Howard the Duck you’ve seen is that terrible 1986 movie. But really, the comic book series it’s based on is SO GOOD. It satirized everything; sex, religion, politics. And Howard was an interesting character; sarcastic, grumpy, always chomping on a cigar. He reminded me of my grandpa…and, I suspect, he probably reminded a lot of other Jewish kids of their grandpas. He really seemed like an anthropomorphic waterfowl version of a Borscht Belt comic. Was that intentional? Who knows. But we do know that this was one of the best-written comics of the ‘70s.

5. MAD About the Fifties, by Harvey Kurtzman (writer), Will Elder (artist), Jack Davis (artist), Wally Wood (artist), and more: Want to know what MAD looked like in the 1950s? When it was the sharpest, most dead-on humor comic (and later magazine) of the Eisenhower Era? This book is a heady sampler of the first eight years of MAD, including such classic stories as Kurtzman and Wood’s “Superduperman,” a parody of DC Comics’s Superman. In the late ‘50s, various celebrity contributors published work in MAD, among them Ernie Kovacs and Danny Kaye, and their work is included here as well. Also worthy of note: original MAD editor Kurtzman sprinkled his stories with a good dose of Yiddish, often to heighten the comedic effect. One can see evidence of this in the first issue of MAD, which opens on a story about two criminals. The title of the story? “Ganefs” (Yiddish for “thieves”).

Arie Kaplan, a comedian and author, is the writer behind the JPS title From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books – a 2008 National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a 2009 Sophie Brody Honor Book, and a 2009 National “Best Books 2009” Awards Finalist. He has also written numerous comic book scripts. Most recently, Kaplan wrote the short story “Man of Snow,” in which Superman battles a Snow Golem (appropriate, given the theme of “Jewish comics”). That story appears in the DC Comics anthology DC Holiday Special 2009, on sale now. Kaplan is currently writing the story and dialogue for the upcoming House M.D. videogame (based on the popular TV show) for Legacy Interactive. For more information, visit www.ariekaplan.com.