Thu 5/7-Sun 8/23
It’s surprising — or maybe it isn’t — how many significant comics creators were/are Jewish. Everyone knows, of course, about Cleveland’s Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who created Superman while students at Glenville High School, then located in a heavily Jewish neighborhood. But there are also such creators as American Splendor’s Harvey Pekar, Brian Michael Bendis of Ultimate Spider-Man, Peter Kuper (Spy vs. Spy), and Terri Libenson (The Pajama Diaries). And those are just the ones from Cleveland!
So there’s plenty of material to fuel a big exhibit such as the Maltz Museum’s Icons in Ink: The Jewish Comics Experience, which opens this week and runs through August 23. It explores the growth of comics of the last century, including how they were influenced by Jewish identity and how they looked at difficult subjects such as anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.
It’s a huge show, a 4,000-square-foot exhibition displaying more than 100 original artworks, vintage comic books, and historical artifacts, such as Siegel’s writing desk, provided by both publishers and private collectors, many on view for the first time. It includes a special section called “Cleveland: Home of Heroes!” which spotlights the artists and authors mentioned above and the role Cleveland played in comics history. And there’s also an interactive “laboratory” space where visitors can design their own comics, don costumes and props to pose in a photo booth, and draw on shared walls.
Go here for more information and tickets, as well a special eents during the show’s run.