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Friday March 16, 2007

Holy Jewish heritage, Batman! Comic writer, historian swoops into town

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Every boy needs someone to look up to.

A young Arie Kaplan found that someone in the person of ’Mazing Man — a delusional, possibly escaped mental patient whose good fortune in winning the lottery let him don a Saxon-like helmet and fight small time crimes like toddlers picking up discarded cigarette butts or pussy cats trapped in high trees.

Of course, ’Mazing Man was a comic book hero, not a real person. And since he was a midget, Kaplan wasn‘t exactly “looking up” to him.

“His name was Sigfried Horatio Hunch III, and he lived in Queens — which is where I live now,” said Kaplan, a young, fast-talking, funny man with a passing resemblance to actor Jon Cryer. “I was about 10 maybe, and oh, man, was this funny stuff! [I thought] wow, if I ever get a chance to be in the comics industry, this is what I’d do.”

Of course, the market for humorous comic books is not nearly as lucrative as the one depicting a seemingly endless array of ordinary folks who either tumble into vats of toxic filth or find themselves bombarded with gamma rays, only to emerge with untold super powers. You know, superheroes.

But, what, him worry? Kaplan eventually found his niche at MAD magazine. Remember that “Star Wars” parody poster you saw in the run-up to the Iraq war showing President Bush and Condi Rice as Anakin Skywalker and Princess Amidala — that was Kaplan’s work for MAD.

In addition to being a comic writer and artist, Kaplan is also a bona fide expert on all things comic bookish. He is the author of “Masters of the Comic Book Universe Revealed!” and can recite the names of pen-and-ink men, comic writers or their creations with the alacrity of bar room regulars recalling everyone on the field when Dennis Eckersley stepped on first to end the 1989 World Series.

The Baltimore-born New Yorker will appear at two Bay Area synagogues for a trio of lectures on Jews in the comic book field. He speaks at Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah at 6 p.m. Friday, March 23, and at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 24 and noon Sunday, March 25.

And make no mistake, he asserts, the comic book business is as Jewish as motherhood and guilt pie. In the beginning, all was dark — for young Jewish artists and writers, that is. Indeed, the comics business was a desperation move for budding writers and artists of the Depression who couldn’t find employment in “respectable” fields like advertising or fine art because of their Semitic surnames (which many Anglicized anyway).

“They gravitated toward this small start-up no one thought would do anything. It was the same way movies began at the dawn of the 20th century. Enterprising Jewish businessmen founded the film industry because a lot of old money people thought it was just a fad. [They] didn’t come from money, and they knew what people wanted to buy.”

The comics are still heavily Jewish, largely because the Jews who founded the industry often mentored and passed the reins to their Jewish protégés.

Kaplan, who contributes to Reform Judaism magazine and pens their “Dave Danger, Action Kid” comic strip, has a soft spot for the superhero genre. One of the first comics he remembers reading is an old Batman edition retelling the origin of the Riddler (he fell into a vat of something or other).

“I asked my high school biology or chemistry teacher if it was possible for someone who fell into a vat of nuclear waste or acid to come out looking like the Joker or Two-Face,” Kaplan recalled. “She said it was technically possible but not probable. And that really upset me.”

Still, Kaplan wishes the superhero genre didn’t dominate comics as much as it does. “What if every movie was a big, dumb action movie?” he asked.

“A lot of these characters were started 70 years ago,” he continued. “That’s not a bad thing, but sometimes you wish a new cycle of characters started every few years. Films get remade all the time, but we’re not seeing ‘Gone with the Wind’ or ‘Casablanca 2007.’ We’re not seeing Rhett and Scarlett’s adventures up on the screen anymore.”

But “’Mazing Man,” the movie? Kaplan would be down with that.

For more information about Kaplan’s appearance at Temple Isaiah, call (925) 283-8575. For more information about his speeches at Congregation Beth Am, call (650) 493-4661. All three appearances are free.

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