This week we are looking at the Top Six Modern Jewish Writers.  Every other week, this column looks at the Jewish influence on comics.  Up to this point, I have focused on exploring the origins of the artform, but in this issue we are looking at the Jewish men and women creating today’s amazing tales.

Here is the rules for how I came up with this amazing list: The writer has to have been at a career high in the past ten years, their work has to discuss Jewish themes, they have to be Jewish (ehhhhh, don’t get mad, this is a Jewish column) and their work has to be printed in America (ehhhhh, don’t get mad, I am a dumb American).

Top Six Modern Jewish Writers

Matt Fraction

Ok, so technically Matt Fraction is not a Yid. The dude did not grow up Jewish, but he rocks an Ashkenazi last name. Although his family lost their connection to the faith generations ago, Fraction proudly states that he hopes to one day research his family history and Jewish roots. He gets Chanukah Gelt points (they are like brownie points, but circumcised) for further exploring The Thing’s Jewish past in Fantastic Four Volume 4, Issue 8. In the issue, Ben Grimm returns to his home, the Lower East Side. Fraction got all kindsa Jewy in it! He had characters rocking kippot and even had Grimm stop for a moment to kiss his Aunt’s mezuzah!

Joann Sfar

The only reason Joann Sfar is not higher on this list is because his recent work has not been translated into English, therefore I have not read it. This dude right here was the king of Jewish comics from 2006-2008. Sfar is a French artist who wrote imaginative tales exploring his Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage. Be sure to read both volumes of The Rabbi’s Cat (and watch the movie version on Netflix) and Klezmer, his ode to the Ashkenazi musical genre.  To whet your appetite about his work, The Rabbi’s Cat features a tale about the atheist, talking cat attempting to become a Bar Mitzvah so the Rabbi will allow him to hang out with his beautiful daughter.  Get this now!

Greg Rucka

Co-created Batwoman- Nuff Said!

James Sturm

I LOVE JAMES STURM! The award-winning The Golem’s Mighty Swing is one of my favorite graphic novels I own. I hate sports, but I love this classic story of a Jewish minor league baseball team and their travels through America in the 1920s. It is both a very American tale and very Jewish tale, with a mix of African-American history. I also loved his take on the Fantastic Four in Unstable Molecules. His latest Yiddish graphic novel, Market Day, is about a typical day in the life of a rug salesman from the shtetl at the turn of the century. In a recent interview, when discussing his interest in and connection to Jewish characters, he stated “I can’t run away from this connection that I feel toward my own history.” Luckily for us fanboys and fangirls, Sturm is teaching the future comic creators at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, ensuring we will have many more awesome comics in the years ahead!

Rutu Modan

Any fanboy or fangirl that lives in Israel knows that the country’s comic culture is almost non-existent. There are two comic shops in Tel Aviv, but other than that the country is a bare desert. Rutu Modan has worked hard to increase the popularity of comics throughout Israel. Her big break came when she infiltrated Jerusalem and Tel Aviv newspapers with weekly comic strips. Modan co-founded Actus Tragicus, an Israeli cartoonists’ publishing collective, and she even edited a short lived Hebrew version of Mad Magazine! She currently teaches courses in art and comics at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

I was so excited when Rutu Modan hit the American comic book scene because she gave us a much needed sabra perspective on Israel. While many graphic novels have been about Israel, they were always from an outsider view and strictly focused on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Modan’s comics show readers a view into the lives of people actually living there, a view many comic readers had not seen. They do not claim to be political, nor do they attempt to debate Israel’s stances or existence. Be sure to check out her Eisner Award winning graphic novel Exit Wounds, her children’s comic Maya Makes A Mess and her recent work The Property.

Brian Michael Bendis

Brian Michael Bendis grew up in Cleveland, the home of the second most famous Jew ever, Superman (the first being Jesus, of course). He attended an Orthodox day school at the same time he fell in love with comics. Like many comic creators, he grew up without a father. The lack of a father figure is what inspired many early creators to create their own fictional male role models. In his youth, Bendis identified with both the Torah and Marvel Comics due to them being “full of mythological sources of father and son.”

Bendis’s passion for comics led him to the Cleveland Institute of Art. After graduating, he even worked briefly drawing illustrations and caricatures at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Bendis’s art work on the Jewish scene clearly brought him good luck because he met his wife Allissa while doing freelance illustration work for the Hillel Foundation.

After some time in for indie companies and Image, Bendis came over to Marvel in the early 2000s and hasn’t left since. By the time he was at Marvel, he was no longer drawing any of his comics; he was strictly a writer. Once Bendis was bringing in some decent dough, he started a family that now includes three daughters and a son, two of which are adopted. One is from Ethiopia, and one is African-American. He understands how important it is for kids to grow up with characters that look like them and represent their cultures. This shows in his work as he writes strong male and female characters from all different backgrounds and has worked to greatly diversify the Marvel Universe. I am proud to have this man writing the books that my future kids will be brought up on.

I have often complained that minority comic characters will often represent demographics but their characters are written without any of the cultural traits. Example- Kitty Pride going years without any Jewish references. Bendis is not afraid to have Kitty rocking a beautiful Jewish star chain around her neck every issue, and she uses Yiddish terms daily! For a boy like me who grew up in a community with very few Yids, seeing a major comic character embrace her heritage is so important!

Bendis’s excellent storytelling can twist my emotions and bring me such joy and pain within every issue.  Seriously, Marvel could have Bendis write every character and I will read ’em all!  (And he has written most every Marvel character at one point, and I have read them all.)

Honorable Mentions:  Miriam Katin (We Are On Our Own), Neil Gaiman, Miriam Libicki (Jobnik!), Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less)

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Jay Deitcher, LMSW(@mrdeitcher) is an educator on comic history and runs successful Free Comic Book Day events yearly.  You can see a listing of his incredible articles at JayDeitcher.com.