The legendary company Detective Comics, now known colloquially as “DC,” was headquartered in this location between 1938 and 1950. During this period, they published the character that would become the face of the company and, arguably, the comics industry in general: Superman. Beneath the cape and tights is a character with Jewish culture embedded in every fiber of his Kryptonian muscles. The Man of Steel was invented by Cleveland-born Jewish artists Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1936, inspired by other pulp heroes at the time like Doc Savage, the “Man of Bronze.” While initially rejected, considered too immature by syndicate editors, DC editor Vincent Sullivan bought the title, as he believed it was a perfect fit for the company’s upcoming series Action Comics. Superman’s independence, good looks, and sheer power were instantly appealing to children across America, gaining the character popularity faster than a speeding bullet. Within a few years, comics featuring Superman were responsible for 10% of the industry’s sales. While largely cloaked in reference and subtext, much of Superman’s backstory and Kryptonian heritage reflects Siegel and Shuster’s backgrounds as children of the Jewish diaspora. Superman is an immigrant from a dying world of scientists, sent away to a safer land to protect him: an accurate allegory for the experiences of many European Jewish immigrants fleeing oppression, from the Pogroms to (later on) the Holocaust. A key example of Kent’s ties to Jewry is his parallels to the story of Moses: both were sent in vessels (a basket and a spaceship, respectively) away from a people about to be slaughtered, hid their identities until they came of age, and grew became protectors of the weak. Even Superman’s Kryptonian name, Kal-El, directly translates to “Voice of God” in Hebrew, though this connection has not been confirmed. Superman’s moniker, however, comes from the term Übermensch, a word coined by German philosopher Fredreich Nietzsche to describe a man at the peak of human ability. While this is not distinctly Jewish, this bears noting given its’ grimly ironic appropriation by Nazi Eugenicsists to justify the Holocaust. Siegel and Shuster’s embedding of their identities into Superman’s core is one of the first (and possibly most influential) examples of a recurring pattern of Jewish identity in comic books.

Comic books didn’t suffer from this same self-censorship however; the industry was inhabited top to bottom by Jews, and was largely overlooked as a “serious” form of propaganda. As such, it became a prime breeding ground for pro-interventionist propaganda. In 1938, three years before America joined the war, the editor of Timely Comics ordered his stable of artists and authors to show their characters “mopping the floor with Nazi spies and saboteurs.” (Milford 612) Of course, the Jews who filled 330 West 42nd Street took this to heart, and none more iconically than Jack Kirby and Joe Shuster. On the cover of their 1941 title, Captain America Comics #1, several months before the US joined the war, the star-spangled hero clobbered Adolf Hitler, his officers looking on in horror. One can imagine how cathartic it must have felt for Kirby to illustrate this cover, the red-gloved punch fueled not just by super serum but the artist’s rage. Captain America’s symbolic power extended far beyond the offices of Timely, however. His depiction is that of the idealized American, indefatigable, masculine, and honorable, a stark contrast to the conniving (though ultimately incompetent) Germans he battled. The simple, powerful imagery of the comic portrayed the fight against the Axis Powers as not just a Jewish one, but an American one. The message proved not only effective but also incredibly popular—the comic eventually outsold Time Magazine. The popularity of Captain America’s clear pro-intervention messaging serves as a key example of the power of comic books as Jewish political art— a power that would be put to good use in later works like Maus.

As World War II ended, comics shifted, and Timely Comics underwent a series of name changes- from Timely, to Atlas, to finally, Marvel; a name meant to reflect the rebirth in popularity of the superhero. Around this time. Marvel moved into a new location on W 50th Street, the building you now stand in front of. All the while, a new figure was rising in the ranks of the company and the comic world—a young Jewish New Yorker named Stanley. Stanley Martin Lieber (better known as Stan Lee) was born in 1922 to Romanian-Jewish parents on the Upper West Side. He started as an assistant at Marvel in his teens, working his way through the ranks until becoming the chief editor and face of the company. In his career, Lee created scores of superheroes that went on to become icons of not only the comic book industry but Hollywood as well, including the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. While many of their superpowers and backstories were pre-existing tropes of the genre, what set them apart was their realistic surroundings and grounded personalities. These stories weren’t set in the mythic skylines of Metropolis or Gotham, but on the familiar streets and rooftops of New York. Their heroism is complicated by deeply mundane drama, their mistakes come back to haunt them, and their secret identities and personal lives intersect in awkward ways. Lee wanted “...characters I could personally relate to...” and this relatability potentially manifested itself in the Jewish overtones of many of the characters. Peter Parker is a scrawny, bookish, and frequently bullied high schooler from Forest Hills (a historically Jewish part of Queens), who frequently uses Yiddish slang as he annihilates goons. The Thing (who has since become canonically Jewish) is a tough-talking clay guardian (ala the Golem) from the Lower East Side—an area of Manhattan Jack Kirby, primary artist of the Fantastic Four, grew up in. In this era of comics, these characters don’t simply serve as an outlet for political beliefs and have inspirations from the cultures of their Jewish creators, but have Jewishness, whether explicit or not, baked into their cores by an author wanting relatability. In this way, comics became an early form of Jewish representation.

As decades trundled by, both Jews and Comic Books continued to gain social acceptance not only on the bustling streets of New York City, but in the rest of the country as well. With the acceptance of comics specifically came the advent of the graphic novel: comic books with an emphasis on the book, rather than the comic. Given the industry’s history as a genre deeply intertwined with New York Jewry, it feels natural that one of the most iconic examples of the genre was created by a Jew from the Bronx—a Jew who drew the subway station in front of you now in his most iconic work. "Maus: a Survivor’s Tale," by Art Spiegelman, is a graphic novel broken into two parts. The first depicts Art’s father surviving the unimaginable horrors of Auschwitz, as well as Art’s process of creating the book. Every jagged edge of the father and son’s relationship is presented in visceral, almost voyeuristic detail, except for the fact that every character is depicted as an anthropomorphized animal. Jews are drawn as mice and Germans are cats, a clear metaphor for the Nazi’s predation and genocide. One could reasonably argue this lessens the effect of the book’s raw emotion, or treats the Holocaust with irreverence, but the innocent cartoon faces of the Jewish mice and comically cruel Cats, contrasted against unfiltered images of Auschwitz and its atrocities, serve to further the horror. In many ways, Maus represents the culmination of Jewish memory and Comic Books/Graphic Novels’ storied relationship; a comic that exploits its “low art” status to investigate the oppression and marginalization of a minority group— the same minority group that brought the comic book into the mainstream and beyond. Maus became lauded by critics and readers alike, becoming the first ever graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, though in the “special award” category, rather than biography. The question then arises: After Maus’s monumental achievement: where do comic books go from here?

“What, they're all Jewish, superheroes. Superman, you don't think he's Jewish? Coming over from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick a name like that for himself." (Chabon 245) This quote comes from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon. The book revolves around a pair of Jewish kids in 1940s New York; Sammy Klayman, a teenager with a love for superheroes, and his distant cousin Josef Kavalier, a Czech refugee of the Holocaust with a talent for art. Together, in the style of iconic duos like Siegel and Shuster or Simon and Kirby, they create the Escapist: a Fascist-fighting hero with the ability to escape from any trap or break any bond. Empire Comics, the company the two work for, is fittingly located in the Empire State Building. The company’s fiction location serves as an homage to the history of Timely Comics, which was based in this building from the years 1942 to 1951. Throughout Kavalier and Clay, Chabon uses the Golem of Prague as both a recurring motif and a plot device Josef escapes Nazi-occupied Prague while smuggling its’ supposed corpse out of the city, and in doing so implies a thesis that all superheroes are, in some way, golems: protectors brought to life by Jews through ink on slips of paper. Whereas many of the comic book artists here draw on pre-existing Jewish culture and legend, the novel instead memorializes comic books and the artists who created them as an important part of Jewish history in its own right. In including explicit homages to the biographies of Jewish artists alongside figures like The Golem, Chabon mythologizes the lives of those same creatives, framing them as the true heroes. Conclusion: Jewish New Yorkers and the ways in which their heritage was channeled through their art was central to the birth and evolution of comic books. Superman’s parallels to immigrant Jews of both myth and of the modern Diaspora is a key part of what makes him such a powerful symbol of strength and protection; Captain America’s birth as anti-Nazi propaganda came from the order of a Jewish editor and the minds of two Jewish artists likely frustrated by the US’s lack of response to the atrocities being committed against Jews in Europe. The vast majority of Marvel’s most iconic characters came from Stan Lee’s desire to make them relatable to himself, and in doing so, infused them with parts of his Jewish ancestry. Maus, in contrast to the prior three mentioned, was explicitly created about Judaism, and in creating such a personal and grief-laden piece, elevated graphic novels into the echelons of high art. Finally, Chabon’s use of Judaism and Jewish myth in his retelling of these artists’ stories is the beating heart of Kavalier and Clay’s plot, prose, and historical grounding. Ultimately, comic books represent one of the largest ways Jews were able to not only affect pop culture, but also include themselves and their identities in it throughout the mid-to-late 20th century.