Abraham and Psychoanalysis Comics

Over the years, many artists have tackled "inner space"; the world of the mind; craziness, insanity, psychiatry, head-trips, and psychoanalysis. Wouldn't you say that the story of the binding of Isaac is worthy of being told over several issues ot "Psychoanalysis"? The problem with the story of the Akeida is that Abram does't speak (other than "hineni; here I am) One can only image the inner torment that Abraham must feel. I can only wonder what the internal dialogue Abraham must have had with himself, as he struggled to obey God. Certain "film noir" film directors come to mind: Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles. If the Akeida was done correctly as a comic book, it was have loads of thought balloons, and would have Wally Wood as the artist. Lots of reflected light, dramatic closeups, and sillouettes. It would be filled with Abram's inner-dialogue with himself. And it would probably be in E.C.
s "new trend" comic boo, "Psychoanalysis". Without that inner-dialogue, Abram becomes an automoton: an unthinking robot. The word balloon as the place where a drash resides. What a concept.

The Torah with Sound Effects

One way that comic artists spice of comic book stories is with sound effects. Even with already strong material, sound effects can add that little special something, that finishing touch. In my hand I'm holding one of my old comics from the 1970's, "The Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu" #58 (Marvel Comics, 35 cents). Just for fun, without revealing any of the plot, I'm going to list all of the sound effects from that issue, in order. Note: Most of these sound effects don't have exclamation points! Interesting.... okay, Here we go: BRAM! (pg 3), BRAM! AGH, ZHEOR (pg 6), SPAK (pg 7), BRAM (pg 10), WFFFF (pg 16), BAF (pg 17), BUKSH, HWAP (pg 22), WUD, SWAK, CHUNT (pg 27), BRAM (pg 30). Wow, can you imagine how the torah would be spiced up if it had sound effects added to it? To test this, lets try adding some sound effects from the list I just quoted, to the current torah portion, Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89). Witness this enhanced version of Numbers 4:5; "At the breaking of camp ("BAF!"), Aaron and his sons shall go in ("WFFF!")and take down the screening curtain ("CHUNT!") and cover the Ark of the Pact with it ("WUD!")." Not bad! Did you notice how the addition of sound effects actually increases your kavanah? By voicing sound effects of the actions performed by the characters in the torah, we can get closer to God. It's as if we're borrowing some of the methods used by the old radio plays of yesteryear. Sound effects help make real a world in our mind. Daresay, I'll wager that even some of the more dry portions of the torah could benefit from the nutrifying goodness of sound effects. If it's okay to translate the siddur into comic book form as a way to understand the meaning and intentions of our prayers, then it's also okay to add sound effects to the torah, so that we can increase our kavanah.

Dr. Strange and pop psychology

I just recently bought the collected issues of the old Doctor Strange comics, and I must say, I have a renewed appreciation for Stan Lee, their author. Lee (Leiber, actually), was not shy about using psychology and psychiatry as source material for this comic scripts. Doctor Strange is, on the surface, about "Black Magic" (whatever that is), but it's actually about the human psyche, where the fight for good over evil happens in the human mind. The nightmarish dreamscape cooked up by artist Steve Ditko is great, filled with a variety of icons of pop-art surrealism heavily influenced by Salvidor Dali (just think of Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory") I'm trying to imagine how Doctor Strange would change is there were references to the Zohar (the sourcebook of the Kaballah & Jewish Mysticism) Floating Hebrew letters? Dark fire against Light fire? Jewish archetypes as comic characters in a nightmarish underworld? Gehenom (sp?) as the place where Doctor Strange fights his battles? Dr. Stange's battles all seem to be with his nightmares. I've got a renewed appreciation for Dr. Strange, which is actually a comic book form of pop psychology, but with a creepy underworld surrealism pop art gloss.

Why is it okay for Man to censor God?

When putting together the Comic Book Siddur, I made sure that there was no "gratutious" violence, that is, instances of people hitting each other. The only violence I illustrated had to do with the weather, and those are Acts of God. Still, some of my critics feel that the very image thunderstorms, electrical energy, and cosmic fire is too violent, and thus "inapproprite", even though that imagery is very much a part of the Bible. You only have to read the upcoming parsha, Shemini, to see how graphic and gross the torah can get. This is where we see the preist Aaron preparing a sacrifice for God. He slaughters a calf, and when proceeds to dab the calf's blood at various places of the alter. It had to be pretty bloody, because Aaron then takes the calf's fat, kidneys and liver and burn them at the base of the altar as an offering. The pungent smoke that results is also part of the offering to God.

Now, without going any further into the details of this parsha, doesn't this strike you as a bit graphic? I can only imagine what one of my critics would say about this imagery, if it were to be illustrated in comic book form. Too gross? Too graphic? But this ritual is at the core of our religion. Even though later, it was substituted with prayer (prayer being a sacifice of ourselves to God), we still have this very graphic imagery as part of our literary tradition. I always get a kick out of watching a little old granny approaching the bima to read a portion such as this.

Recently, Aline Kominsky Crumb spoke at our local JCC, and she let out the word that her husband, R.Crumb, has finished working a comic book version of Genesis, warts and all. I can't wait to see it. Imagine what he'd do with Exodus, with it's graphic descriptions of sacrifices to God. This is not to revel in the gore, but rather, to ask the question "Who are we to censor God's language?"

Marvel Comics & the Passover Plagues, more entries!

Rabbi Benjamin Sharff (editor of the Comic Book Siddur has come up with some suggestions for addition Marvel Comics characters to represent the Passover Plagues :

Plague of Death of the First Born: Dr. Doom

Plague of Hail: Storm

Plague of Frogs: Toad

Plague of Wild Beasts: Beast

Plague of Darkness: Mysterio

Marvel Comics & the Passover Plagues

With Passover upon us, I got to musing how the plagues in the passover story would make great inspiration for some Marvel Comics Supervillains. So I did some checking online, and sure enough, almost every plague has it's corresponding supervillain. Sometimes it's a stretch, but there's enough correspondence for me to make my point! So, in the spirit of passover, here they are: the Marvel Comics supervillain equivalents of the Passover Plagues.

The Plague of the Pharoah (why not? Even though he's not regarded as a plague, he should be): Pharoah

Plague of Locusts: The Locust

Plague of Dead Livestock, Dead Fish, and Boils: The Plague (Bubonicus)

Plague of Dead Livestock, Dead Fish, and Boils (another version): Bacillus

Plague of Frogs: Leap Frog

Plague of Flaming Hail (well, actually just flame; I couldn't find flaming hail): Flame

Plague of Darkness: Dweller-In-Darkness

Theater of the Seder

I've always had a visceral love for Passover, for its sheer theatricality. Everything on the seder plate is symbolic. If it tastes bitter, there's a reason. If it tastes salty, there's a reason for that too. Same for sweetness. I'm also a big fan comic books, and how the comic book art form is a wonderful way for telling a story. But truth be told, not even comic books holds a candle to the re-enactment of our story through tastes, smells, and activities.

As an artist, objects take on a symbolic significance. Oftentimes, the meaning of the symbols is very personal, only understood by you. But for passover, we all understand the meanings of the foods on the Seder plate: with as many senses as we can, we are reminded of the Passover experience, of our slavery in Egypt, of God's plagues against Pharoah, and our ultimate freedom.

I got to thinking about how far the symbolism went. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, in her article on the "My Jewish Learning" site, has a nicely organized breakdown of the meanings of the various foods. She even says something about their placement. Imagine, we don't just thank God for our food, but we also give each food a role in a choreographed table top theater. One thing that I like about Rabbi Jacob's article is that she concludes by inviting the reader to make the seder personal by bring an object that represents liberation to him or herself. Thus, her seder would involve a kind of show-and-tell experience.

Not that this would all be good. Once you get a table of us together, and inviting them to basically kvetch, it could go anywhere. Once you start talking about symbols of freedom, you're bound to start dwelling on stories of captivity as well. What if your seder guest's meaningful symbolic artifacts brought up bad memories? And then there all all of those cups of wine!

I wonder if this great tradition of having a seder, with its symbolic foods, doesn't point the way towards a more theatric and interactive type of literature? Suppose a trend caught on, where the authors of books would include food suggestions at various parts of their stories. I've heard of parties based on a theme from something in real life. But imagine that an author included a food shopping list with their books. That would take writing in a whole new direction: authors would have to write with flavors and aromas (maybe included as notes in the back of the book) Or imagine meeting with friends at a scene from a book, and ordering what one of the characters ordered from the menu.

Only someone who loved the seder would come up with nutty ideas like this.

Moral Vision and Moral Confusion

One of the first prayers our siddur has us say in the morning is "Thank you God for giving us the ability to distinguish darkness from light". In the Comic Book Siddur, I illustrate this as a caped character running and pointing his way towards the sun, out from billowing dark clouds. With this imagery, it's clear that there is "Light" and "Dark", and that it's easy to tell the differene: Black billowing clouds with angry face = Dark; Bright shining smiling sun = Light. That's a simple graphic convention I used to provide a simple meaning to that blessing, to illustrate darkness and light, and how they are different. But if you examine the wording of that blessing, you'll see that the real meaning is much more profound.

It's not enough that God separated Darkness from Light in the early days of Creation. What we're thanking God for is our ability to tell the difference. But who can't tell the difference between darkness and light? Those who are blind. The prayer thanking God for opening the eyes of the blind immediatly follows the prayer thanking God for letting us distinguish darkness from light.

If were are take these prayers at face value, they are trivial, for it's obvious what the difference is between dark and light: one is defined by the other. Light = absence of Darkness, and vice versa. That same goes for the phrase "opening the eyes of the blind". If we were talking about those who are literally blind, then why would it even be in the siddur? Most of us can see; only a fraction of Humanity is without eyesight.

The only way to make sense of both of these prayers is on the metaphorical level. The concepts "dark", "light", and "blindness" have spiritual meaning only as it relates to our soul (that is, the seat of our emotions). I mean, the literal (or "simple") meaning of "light", "dark", and "sight" is nice enough; the world is filled with visual wonders, and our eyes allow us to appreciate them. But think about the moral meaning of these terms (light, dark, sight/vision): the siddur is advising us against moral confusion. We must pray to God that we maintain the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong, or else we're lost, blind, stumbling around in the dark with no direction home. Before you know it, you may be convincing yourself that Bad is Good, and vice versa. We should pray to God that we have a moral foundation, and that we don't forget who we are.

So how do you illustrate that in a comic book? By having a guy in a cape running out of an angry dark billowing cloud into a smiley happy bright sunshiney face.

Why Get Pissed at the Prayer for Peeing?

Some people just can't handle any reference to urination and defication, even if it's in the siddur. One of the the early morning prayers, "Asher Yatzar", has us thanking God for the various orafices and cavities in or bodies. The prayer goes on to get descriptive (quoting the ArtScroll Siddur): "If any one of them (our cavities or orafices) were to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to stand here before You. Anyone who's ever had trouble urinating or making a bowel movement can appreciate this prayer.

In my book, the Comic Book Siddur", I illustrate this particular prayer with a guy sitting on a box, in an artistic reference to Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker". I pointed a word balloon to his mouth, with the text of the prayer reduced to: "Thanks God, for making me regular!"

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) some people find that illustration offensive. "You've got a guy sitting on a toilet!", a woman explanined to me; "I just think that it's in poor taste!" What baffles me is that my illustration of the prayer, and my english translation of it ("thanks for making me regular!") is much more tame than the actual english translation as found in the Art Scroll siddur. The "Asher Yatzar" prayer explicitly talks about bodily cavites being obstructed making it impossible to relieve oneself. That imagery gets into your head just by reading the prayer right out of the Art Scroll siddur. But in the Comic Book Siddur, it's all sanitized and euphemized, while still getting across the same idea. I don't show someone who's bodily orafices have been obstructed, who'd having an impossible time urinating or defacating. That imagery sprung from the original authors of the siddur. But when I come up with some counter-imagery, namely, a superhero sitting on a soapbox, musing about life (ala Rodin's "Thinker") suddenly I'm the one being offensive. And to think that the big problem with a comic book version of the siddur in the first place had more to do with the fact that it had illustrations. Some people are comfortable describing disturbing graphic scenes with language, but illustrating them -- even in a sanitized and euphemistic way --suddenly makes them objectionable? Go figure...

Who is the Bible's Disembodied Narrator?

There's a mysterious unnamed character in the Bible, who seems to be bigger than God; a sort of meta-God. I'm talking about the narrator of the Bible. In the torah portion, "Tzav" (Leviticus 6:1 - 8:36) the first line starts with "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying..."

Who's describing this situation? The narrator of the Bible is unnamed, but seems to have a more comprehensive of view of events than God Himself.

There are only two explanations: either the narrator is a "meta-God", a being outside of God and bigger than God (an impossibility, since God's domain is infinite, in all of time and space), or God likes to talk of Himself in the third person. And I thought that that was a literary innovation devised by Raymond Chandler and all other writer's of tough guy crime fiction where the protagonist was constantly narrating his own tale in the third person voice.

Viewing God as a Being who talks about Himself as being elsewhere, or as if He was someone else ("He", not "I"; "The Lord said to Moses" versus "I said to Moses"...) is at first glance very funny. I suddenly hear echoes of Humphrey Bogart saying "put down the tablet, Moe, or I'll shoot!", but after thinking about this for a moment, I begin to feel that it can't be any other way. For if God were to identify Himself as having a particular identity (that is "I"), then he immediatly becomes diminished. Imagine instead of the Bible reading "The Lord said to Moses..", but rather, "I said to Moses...", that completely changes the relationship to Man and God. God becomes a fellow traveler, rather than a Being lording over us.

This forms a nice segue into a key stylistic choice in my graphic novel version of the Jewish prayerbook, called the "Comic Book Siddur": the choice to keep the tone of the siddur very familar and jocular. By translating the tone of the siddur from it's royal language of "king and servant", into the language of "Superhero and sidekick", our relationship to God changes. There's a link between language and power. The more courtly language signifies an attitude of respect, however, it stifles the more tender emotions. On the other hand, a more familiar tone is an invitation to be "real" and honest (that is, the criteria for intimacy), if more effective to touching peoples hearts, which is what everyone wants when they try to "see God". Can you have an All Powerful God, and still talk to Him like He's your buddy? Should He, in turn, talk to Moses as if He was his buddy?

The answer, in my opinion, is...both.

You want power, and you want tenderness. You want a complete person. And you want God to be a complete God. To be too authoritarian is a problem. But to be too intimate can be a problem too. You want to get close, but you also need some distance. This was nicely illustrated in the scene where Moses receives the tablets from God. He's close to God (and thus his face glows), but he can't get too close, lest he perish.

So who's the disembodied narrator in the torah? It's God. He talks in the third person, because He's simultaneously talking to Himself, and to others, but He wants there to be some distance. Of course talking in the third person is also a symptom of a narcissistic personality disorder, but that seems to make sense too. Witness God's rage! Witnesss His need to feel loved by demanding that sacrifices be made to Him! This is not a socially sanctioned way for people to act. Should we put up with it from the Ruler of the Universe?

God's narcissistic "personality" (as witnessed by his talking in the third person) is easy to excuse on philosophical grounds: God wants to be close, but not too close. We can bring him close by talking with Him with jocular comic-book-styled language. But as the torah makes clear in the first line of Leviticus 6:1, God's penchant for talking in the third reveals His narcissistic tendencies.

But at least we now know who our disembodied narrator is.

Why's the Bible so gory? To please the kids?

Why do kids, especially boys, like gross and disgusting things? As kids get into their teen years, they develop a fascination with gross and gory things. In my case, it was the gory images from "Tales from the Crypt".

Movie makers out of Hollywood long ago discovered box office gold in splatter flicks, such as "Scanners" or "Aliens", or even "Jaws", just to name a few. The Bible is filled with splattering, flaming, and exploding imagery. How interesting that right when kids develop their fascination with gore, it's time to get a bar mitzvah!

Perhaps the redactors to the Bible wanted to make sure that the gore was firmly rooted in a moral context (that is, part of God's plan, or a result of the Wrath of God), rather then being gratuitous and gross, and with the intention of scaring kids. Maybe the Biblical scribes of olde felt that it was important to scare kids with stories of God's wrath, all in the name of making sure that they lived a life that adhered to the commandments recorded by Moses. Because gore without God is a world that is lost. Even even gore WITH God is hard to stomach.

As I said earlier, perhaps our sages of yesteryear recognized that right as kids start getting interested in gory things, perhaps that's the best time for a child to assume the moral principles of adult. I wonder if that's a hidden reason why Jewish kids get their bar mitzvahs at thirteen years old!

What's the tone of God's voice? It matters!

In the torah, God often speaks to Moses. What does His voice sound like? I've already pointed out, in the last post, that God's words really don't tell us His MEANING, for the tone of His voice carry more content than the words He actually uttered. Let us suppose that God is passive-aggressive, or says things to test us mortals (I mean, God IS always testing our mettle, is He not?).

When reading the words of God in His exchanges with Moses, God could mean a variety of things depending on the tone of his voice. From anger to sarcasm to impishness...you just don't know. Only Moses knows the tone of God's voice when God spoke to his. But since we don't know it, we can't tell from the text whether Moses acted in good faith (sorry about the pun on "faith"), bad faith, out of a desire to please, or out of spite. Remember, Moses' relationship with God was very chummy and familiar; Moses did, after all, feel nothing about destroying the most sacred objects at the time, the stone tablets upon which God had carved the ten commandments. It makes you think twice about Moses' actual respect for God: how could Moses destroy the law, which he had just received from God? And why was God willing to make a second set, thus giving Moses a second chance? Think about it: God creates the ten commandments, etched in stone...and Moses, in a fit of rage, breaks them apart. Why is he taking his anger (at the people worshipping the Golden Calf) out on the stone tablets? Perhaps because the tablets were intended, by God and Moses, as a gift. But Moses, realizing that the People weren't worthy of the gift, destroyed it. Apparantly Moses wasn't into recycled gifts. No exchanging them at Bookman's for trade credit (that's a local joke. Bookman's is a "recycled entertainment" store in Arizona. But Bob Bookman is Jewish, so I'm sure he'd appreciate the joke) What's incredible, though, is that Moses gets himself a replacement copy! He goes back up Mount Sinai and God zaps off another set. I can only imagine what God might have said to Moses, on his return trip back up Mount Sinai: "Dude, you break this set, and your ass it toast!"
Without info about the tone of God's voice, or the sound of God's voice, it's up to us to imagine what God really meant when He spoke. Sarcastic? Coy? Humorous? Humorless? Angry? Professional? It's really hard to tell.

God may have created the World out of words when He spoke...but we have to decide what was God's mood at the time of creation, and at other key moments in the torah. There's a case to be made that the tone of God's voice more accurately reveals His intentions than do the literal meaning of His words.

Representing the Tone of God's Voice

God spoke to Moses. In my mind, I usually imagine a deep commanding voice...you know, the stereotype. But what clues to we really have about the TONE of God's voice? Not many... but if you think about it, it's vitally important for understanding the text of the torah. Is God calm? Angry? Sarcastic? Whispering? Gritting his teeth? Cool? You really don't know. It's up to the reader to imagine the "mood" of God when he's speaking.

Comic book artists don't have this problem; that's what word balloons are for. If God's angry, use an "electric" word balloon, filled with spikey points. If He's whispering, use a dotted line word balloon. These are the graphic symbols for representing speach. But think about how much fun you could have putting the text in different word balloon shapes. The shape of the word balloon completely changes the tone and mood of the voiced embodied therein. If we got into the habit of drawing speech balloons of our own design around the words of God (that is, the uttered "speech" of God), then we would be contributing in the listening of God, and ultimately the understanding of God. For the tone of someone's voice communicates just as much, if not more, than the words actually uttered. In fact, the tone and tenor of someones's voice, the "pre-verbal" noises that make communicate so much. But if all we're hearing are God's "words", God still needs our help in assigning a "voice" or a tone to those words. Comic book artists, based on their reading of God's tone, can design a thought balloon or a speech balloon which best represents that tone.

"Between thought and expression lies a lifetime" -- Lou Reed

...and a word balloon. Indeed.

Does God Speak in a Word Balloon?

As a comic book artist, and as the author of a Jewish graphic novel, I'm fascinated by the visual conventions we in the comics biz use to represent speech, thought, and feelings. The word balloon is an awesome creation. It floats above the heads of those speak, so that we can "read their minds", as it were. A pointer to the speaker quickly identifies for us who is doing the speaking. I wonder, when God spoke to Moses (pick your favorite scene), WHERE would the word balloon be? Of course, we could just point the word balloon skyward, and I'm sure everyone would get the idea, but is God really in a cloud? Or is He everywhere? If God is everywhere, then the word balloon would point nowhere. Maybe it would just be a disembodied sound effect floating in the air. But when Moses talks to God, I'm sure that Moses would have a word balloon point to his mouth. Representing God as a word balloon is a tricky idea, because it immediatly makes some assumptions: that God has a mouth, that God has a voice, and that God's voice is coming from somewhere that can be pointed at (with a word balloon). Throughout the Bible, God has spoken to Man by the use of various agents of vessels, such as the burning bush, the firey cloud that followed the Israelistes during their wanderings in the desert, and the talking ass (the equestrian type) in the story of Balak and Balaam. How is a comic artist to represent talking to God, but to do it in a respectful way? The easy thing to do would to just point a word balloon skyward and forget about it. But that simple act creates the assumption that (as already noted) that God has a mouth, a voice, and a physical place in the world. But it also introduces the feelings that we get from comic books; a kind of sassiness. Can that attitude exist in the Hebrew school or the prayer service, and still contribute to an aura of holiness and respect. That's an issue with which I often struggle. You want to be readable, and accessible, but you don't want to be a joke. You've got to straddle the line between the sublime and the ridiculous. That ridge is where the heart of the Comic Book Siddur resides. If I did my job correctly, you'll feel the frission.

The Torah as Literary Seqential Art

In their efforts to make the case that comics are like fine art, comic book artists with fine art pretentions have renamed what they do as "sequential art". When comics are recast as sequential art, then the whole panorama of art history suddenly looks like comics.

Any art that is broken down into bite sized pieces suddenly becomes fair game for being included in the sequential art pantheon. In fact, the whole "salon style" of hanging paintings on a wall in grid formation feeds into this idea nicely. If we view an art gallery or a museum as another version of a comic book page layout, then we can see that the most popular curator strategies are "salon style" (already mentioned), and "comic strip style", that is, hanging the pieces in a horizontal line.

To paraphrase Scott McCloud in in book "Understanding Comics", comics work the the areas between the pictures. Your mind make the sense by trying to see a series of disparate images unified in some way. Next time you look at a series of pictures on a wall, pretend that they are all hung in a certain order for a certain reason, and see if you can have fun trying to see a story in their order. You'll watch how your mind works when it tries to see the work as "comics"!

This idea got me thinking about the torah, and its presention into book form. The torah is a scroll. It's a big run-on document, that goes on and on and on...until the end of the scroll. But if you look at the torah in book form, you can see that it's been divided into various portions, or parshas. This was done by later editors. This act of editing a big long scroll into "chapters" is a milestone in sequential art: breaking the stories down into bite-sized pieces. The same goes for the book fomat as well: each turn of the page is an interruption, a break in the sequence; a "panel" for all intents and purposes.

From the conversion of a scroll, into a book with pages, Biblical editors are made the Bible into a work of sequential art, although it wasn't called that at the time. The Torah is in fact a form of literary sequential art, page by page, line by line... Just as Scott McCloud made the point that comics happens by what goes on BETWEEN the panels, the torah is akin to comics in that there's a lot that goes on between the lines.

Moses & the "Vault of Horror"

In my last post, I looked at Frederic Wertham as a sympathetic character, who worried about the influence that comics had on children. In that story, comic literature (specifically the Horror comics of the 1950's, created by EC Comics) were the villain. But Horror comics didn't spring out a vacuum in 1950's America. They sprang from the soul of a country that had been conditioned by decades of "Red Baiting" and fear mongering, and fear of "aliens". Horror comics, as well as sci-fi movies about space aliens, and Hitchcock films about, say someone watching you through a "Rear Window", all provided a nessessary emotional release; it was cathartic.

Against this backdrop appears Frederic Wertham, with his book "Seduction of the Innocent", where he claims that comic books, especially horror comics, are a cause of juvenile delinquency. Had he been a little more intellectually curious, he might have asked, "why are horror comics so popular?" If he had focused his attention on the consumers of horror comics, instead of those who create them, he'd have to look at why kids have a fascination with gross and gory things. The discussion might then broaden to include parenting, the whole "nature vs. nurture" argument, and other topics.

While researching Wertham a little further, however, I found him to he a fascinating character. Although he comes across as a shrill critic, and a real threat to the freedom of the press, he's motivated by a desire to protect young people from the corrupting influences of mass consumer culture, mass culture being a contemporary equivalent of the "Golden Calf" in the Bible. I don't know if Wertham viewed himself as a kind of "Moses" character, sent from God to show the people the law, but his behavior (his "prophet"-like style, warning the people of dangers), but I see him as that type of person. From my research online about him, I've learned that he was trained as a psychiatrist, corresponded with Sigmund Freud (and later in life with comics fans through their fanzines), and was very liberal in his sympathies. I was surprised that worked for racial equality and against censorship. However, there is something very sad and tragic about Wertham, for his pseudoscientific book "Seduction of the Innocent" caused a lot of trouble, but was short on "proof". Wertham noticed that many juvenile delinquents read a lot of comic book literature. Therefore, he concluded, comics were the CAUSE of their juvenile delinquency. You can't make scientific claims without scientfic testing

Wertham's book really did cast a long period of darkness over the comics landscape; a Plague of Darkness. So, at once, Wertham is a sort of Moses character, as well as his own Pharaoh; contained within his own moral crusade are the seeds of the Plague of Darkness. I'm sure he meant well, and that his heart was in the right place, but look at all of the trouble he caused.

And he failed; comics today are darker and more sinister (and more well written!) than ever before. Although he helped destroy EC Comics (a real "CrimeSuspense" Story), fans of those comics went to college, went to art school, and now create very mature works, inspired by EC Comics. Libraries across America include comic books and graphic novels in their collections. Clearly, librarians value the literary qualities of comic book literature.

But I'm bothered how Wertham's crime fighting crusading spirit was the source of so much grief. Clearly he was motivated by a sense of moral indignation and fear. I don't look at him as a cynical person, rather as someone who made emotional decisions rather than scientific ones. Wertham was a psychiatrist, so I'm interested in his project to psychoanalyze superheroes (actually, as a psychiatrist, he should be prescribing medicine for the various superheroes. Psychoanalysis is more in the domain of psychology)

This musing about Frederic Wertham has me thinking about the Jewish idea of "tikkun olam", or "Repairing the World". Clearly, Wertham saw the world as filled with corrupting influences, and that the job of the censor is one of "repair". But can censorship be a valid instrument of repairing the world? Should all ideas be vented, so that the best ones float to the top? (Maybe the best ideas have the most hot air? ;) An ideal for Judaism is to "repair the world", but that suggests that there is an idea of what that "world to come" will be like. If everyone has a different idea of what a "World Repaired" looks like, then you've got the problem of competing agendas; you've got seeds of conflict, even before you can agree to disagree.

The irony of Wertham is that his moral crusade against horror comics created his own "Vault of Horror". When you read about Wertham's background, and his liberal sympathies, he comes across as "Moses", saving the people from paganism. But when you see the real effects of what did, he comes across as Pharaoh, bring a Plague of Darkness across the land of artistic freedom. I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. Although I am left with questions about heroes & villains, and the criteria we use to tell the difference. As it is in life, so it is in today's comic books.

Sympathy for Frederic Wertham

I'm holding in my hand a recent comic book, published by a mainstream press, and available in any comic book shop. The content of story is so dark and gross, that it makes the beloved EC Comics of the 1950's look like comedy. For those of you who are familiar with the history of comic books, you're familiar with the book "Seduction of the Innocent" by Fredric Wertham, which made the case that comic books cause juvenile delinquency. Wertham, a psychiatrist, was roundly derided in comic book circles a "square" adult who just didn't "get" comics. So why do I feel that some of his claims are legit? People ARE influenced by the media that they consume. I'm thinking of, say, the cop who thinks he's or "Dirty Harry" or "Travis Bickle" (of "Taxi Driver"), or the investment tycoon who thinks he's "Gordon Gekko", or the bodybuilder who thinks he's "The Hulk"; it seems that we live in a world of media characters, and we model ourselves after those whom we admire-- or at least those who we see in comics and in the movies. In fact, we probably measure our own lives against those lives we see in the media.

Back to comics and human values, where this is all leading. I'm looking at a comic which I enjoy reading, but would wouldn't feel right if I recommended for kids. It's a dark story (both in content, and in the color palatte). The story logo contains the Nazi "SS" lettering. The imagery in the book includes an angry mouse having sex, a trashed out house with clothes and garbage everywhere, seedy looking characters who look like drug dealers, burned out slums, drug deals (depictions of the exchange of drugs for money), a fat kid with a gun being attacked by giant flying cockroaches, his dead body lying on a porch stoop, dank low-rent apartments, a Wall Street businessman in a sports car making a drug distribution deal with his grubby street partner, words like "fuck" and "bitch". The story ends with a swarm of giant cockroaches feasting on the body of the deceased drug dealer.
After having gotten this far in my description of this comic book, I see that I'm having a change of heart. Despite the fact that the setting and characters of this story are "pagan" and vile, the story does have a moral heart: the bad guys lose (not all of them, but this particular character). The heroes in the story, the moral agents, are actually the cockroaches. They're the ones who live amongst the evil and root it out. It looks disgusting, but I'm sure that it's just as foul as watching Aaron's sons get torched for entering the Temple with "unholy fire". The Bible is just as violent and "pagan" (in its punishments) as is my comic book.

I feel for Frederic Wertham. I'm sure that he worried about his kids, and how the artistic advances in culture (he might call them "degenerate") would affect kids. There are many examples of cases where kids do some heinous act because they read about it or saw it on TV. I'm sure that he felt that he as acting as Superman would, to put it ironically: fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. But if you just focus on the gory details, such as the gruesome EC Horror Comics, or the gross cockroach story that I used to start this article, you'd conclude that comics are "pagan" or immoral. However, that's misguided. You've got to look at who the heroes are, and what the implied values in the story are. The cockroaches, as heroes, "save the day" to some extent, yet their work is not done, and may never be done. The thing that we've got to get used to as readers is to realize that "heroes", like God, could be found in the most unlikely of places. A gut test is this: do you feel brought down and depressed by the story? Or oddly uplifted? Today's edgy comics require more of the reader then those of the Golden Age of yesteryear.

The "Hand" of God

In Judaism, its forbidden to represent God as an image. Curiously, however, we do see stand-ins for God throughout the torah, such as a burning bush, or as a cloud with fire in it. One of the more enjoyable images for me is the Hand of God...literally. There is a synagogue for the 3rd century (which is now in modern-day Syria) called the "Synagogue at Dura Europos". It is filled with mural after mural depicting scenes from the Bible, very similar to what we're used to seeing from Giotto in his depiction of the life of Jesus...but created by Jews thousands of years before Christ. In several murals you can see an actual hand reaching out of a cloud down to people below; that is the Hand of God. So interesting, especially at that early history of the Jews, that God is represented by a Hand. Check out this example of
God freeing the people of Israel from Egypt: It looks like Man really IS created in the image of God. It's just that God is literally out of the picture, with the exception of his arms, which gesture from the top of the "picture plane". God's outstretched arms are a necessary storytelling device in this panoramic scene, for with God's arms, you'd just see a bunch of people escaping Egypt. The artist, who I'm sure had a familiarity of the prohibition of representing an image of God, made a representation of God's arms anyway. Perhaps that's an important point: it's really God's FACE that into which we're not supposed to look.

Remember the scene when Moses goes to the top of Mount Sinai to get the ten commandments from God, but he had to turn his face away from God? You can't look God in the face, lest you die. But what about looking at God's arms? Arms are a little less descriptive. We recognize people by their faces. Could you recognize even those people most close to you simply by looking their arms? It'd bet not. Arms are practically generic, so it's safe to safe arms are practically the same; they're not useful for indentifying people (or God), so it's safe to put God's "arms" in a picture. The important thing with is discussion, however, is to make the point that we need to see a picture of God's arms to understand that, as it says in the torah (and I'm paraphrasing) "You shall leave Egypt like an outstretched arm"... It's the words that you find inside of the mezuzzah. If you look carefully, you can see that God is also wearing tefillin (of course, it could also be cracks in the wall)

I really wish that there were other examples of God's Hand in Jewish art, because the hand is so expressive. One of my favorite artists is George de la Tour, mainly for his intricate use of expressive hand poses. My favorite painting by him is the "Cheat with the Ace of Clubs". It as all sorts of interesting hand poses which tell a great story. Wouldn't it be great if God, who is such an expressive character in the Bible, got a few more expressive shots of his hands? Imagine a visual story told exclusively with hand gestures. Could it be done? I wonder if God had no voice, but just the use of his "hands"; how would he command the Israelites? I've always enjoyed silent graphic novels. Could we treat the relationship between God and Moses as a silent graphic novel? The wheels in my head are spinning...

Abstract Art & the curious case of the Amoeba

For Jewish artists to be stylistically kosher, can they paint realistic / representational pictures? The motivation behind this query is the commandment which says that you may not make images of any creature, including those under water, those that creep on the ground, and that those that fly in the air. Presumably, had the ancients known about microscopic life (or more precisely, if God had been a little more specific) there would have been an additional provision for there not to be any depictions of microscopic life either. Therefore, so the socioligical explanation goes, that is why Jews are drawn towards making "abstract" art: because it doesn't look like anything that swims, creeps on the ground, or flies in the air.

Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you: does the amoeba not swim? Or how about the paramecium? Yes, of course they do! And how would you describe their appearance? (Remember, in this case, it's not fair to describe an amoeba as "amoeba-like": that gets you nowhere) Admit it: an amoeba is shape like a blob. That it, it's shape is..."abstract". If you saw a painting of a bunch of blobs, would you regard that as abstract art? Or a realistic respresentation of a family of amoebas? (new concept: amoebas have families!)

The torah (through Moses) forbids the creation of idols, lest we start to idolize them, and idol worship is the thing that Judaism is squarely against. Sometimes, if you're feeling cranky, you can see some blurring around the edges of this value. For argument's sake, let me set up an oversimplification: Judaism is structured around the life of the mind, where everything is abstact, and the only reality exists in the world of concepts. Although we Jews are oriented to make the World a Better Place (i.e. the "real" world of people, places, and things) we want to stay off of the slippery slope to idol worship, so we avoid making sculptures of any person, lest we start treating it like a God. I think that the proviso for Jewish sculptors is that if they do create an image of a person, then it must not look heroic (I'm thinking of the sculptures of Einstein at National Academy of Science Washington, DC, and the sculpture of him sitting in a garden in Israel, which has him lounging on some steps, and sittion on a park bench) And if making realistic sculpture still proves to moral problem, then the Jewish artist can always retreat into abstraction. But if his work looks amoeba-like, then he's being an idol maker after all!
God created, and loves, ALL creatures, even paramecium and amoebas. And can you see someone worshipping a stone blob? How about a massive stone blob? (Say, a massive molten meteorite from outer space?) Although this is veering into the ridiculous, it's all to make the point ALL art is representational, its just that sometimes you've got to change your perspective to see it.
So does this mean that the Ancient Israelites were screwed from the outset, basically commanded to not make any images at all? No. As I see it, the only want to work your way out of this puzzle is midrashic: that God's world can only be perfect if it includes contradictions and inconsistencies! For in every commandment, there are the seeds of inconsistency (I think)