At a panel tracing the history of Jewish influence in comics, prominent figures from the comic book industry spoke last night in celebration of the student-curated exhibit "Jews and American Comics: The New Generation."
The lecture was part of the exhibit assembled by students from Senior Lecturer in American Civilization Paul Buhle's class AMCV 1903O: "Jewish Americans: Film and Comics." The panel was led by prominent comic artist and James Sturm, director of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., along with speakers Sara Rosenbaum '00 and Rhode Island School of Design alum Jason Lutes.
Buhle welcomed guests in Salomon 001 by stating that "comics have reached a new stage in the United States." After years of feeling like the full appreciation and respect of the comic book industry was always a few years away, Buhle said, the "Golden Age" of comics is now closer than ever.
Sturm described the art of creating comics as assembling very simple, abstract shapes into forms that take on a life of their own.
Though some may describe comic books merely as the fusion of pictures and words, Sturm said he believes cartooning is the melding of graphic design and poetry.
Both art forms work together to present a clear message while boiling down a story to its "essence."
Sturm also read from his 2002 work "The Vast Chasm," about an aristocratic scientist disillusioned by his failure to recreate the otherworldly music from his dreams.
Time magazine labeled Sturm's earlier book, "The Golem's Mighty Swing," the best graphic novel of 2000.
Describing why he creates comics, Lutes said he is drawn to their mixture of representational and abstract communication. Man's urge to make a "mark outside himself" started with cave painting, Lutes said, and evolved into the representational "arm" of images and the abstract "arm" of writing.
Lutes traced the history of comics from medieval woodcuts to contemporary political art, describing how representation of physical action in comics has remained fairly constant over time.
Lutes is currently working on what has become a 12-year project, "Berlin," a comic book that tells the story of characters in Berlin between the World Wars.
Rosenbaum discussed the prominent role Jews have played in the comic book culture. She described the appeal of superhero characters as a "Cinderella story," because people are drawn to stories of masked lives.
It is this quality, Rosenbaum said, that ties Judaism to comics. As a fourth-generation immigrant and Jewish American, Rosenbaum recalls sometimes feeling like an "inside outsider," still not fully incorporated in American culture.
The theme of the outsider recurs throughout comic book storylines, Rosenbaum said.
"Mainstream comic culture in the U.S. owes a lot to the Jewish Diaspora," she added.
The exhibit is a two-part display in the John Hay Library and the John Nicholas Brown Center Carriage House Gallery.
The Hay exhibit contains about 100 examples of contributions from Jewish artists to the comic book world, drawn from the Hay's collection of over 70,000 comic books.
The display includes a Yiddish comic weekly; Mad magazine, founded by Harvey Kurtzman; Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust epic "Maus: A Survivor's Tale"; and tales about Kitty Pryde from the X-Men comics.
At the John Nicholas Brown Center, a screen projects old Betty Boop cartoons and comic book-styled wall panels describe the Jewish influence on comics, including aspects of Jewish tradition, "sex and gender" and "war and violence."
During the reception, Chelsea Miro '10, one of the curators, said the exhibit was "about an experience." She and her classmates had read over 1,000 comics between them to prepare for the exhibit, Miro added.
The purpose of the project was to have students work with primary source materials, rather than textbooks and lectures, Buhle said.
The exhibit is "a model of what Brown undergraduates can do at their best," he added.
