Re-Constructing the Man of Steel: Superman 1938–1941, Jewish American History, and the Invention of the Jewish–Comics Connection

by Martin Lund

In this book, Martin Lund challenges contemporary claims about the original Superman s supposed Jewishness and offers a critical re-reading of the earliest Superman comics. Engaging in critical dialogue with extant writing on the subject, Lund argues that much of recent popular and scholarly writing on Superman as a Jewish character is a product of the ethnic revival, rather than critical investigations of the past, and as such does not stand up to historical scrutiny. In place of these readings, this book offers a new understanding of the Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the mid-1930s, presenting him as an authentically Jewish American character in his own time, for good and ill.
On the way to this conclusion, this book questions many popular claims about Superman, including that he is a golem, a Moses-figure, or has a Hebrew name. In place of such notions, Lund offers contextual readings of Superman as he first appeared, touching on, among other ideas, Jewish American affinities with the Roosevelt White House, the whitening effects of popular culture, Jewish gender stereotypes, and the struggles faced by Jewish Americans during the historical peak of American anti-Semitism.
In this book, Lund makes a call to stem the diffusion of myth into accepted truth, stressing the importance of contextualizing the Jewish heritage of the creators of Superman. By critically taking into account historical understandings of Jewishness and the comics creative contexts, this book challenges reigning assumptions about Superman and other superheroes cultural roles, not only for the benefit of Jewish studies, but for American, Cultural, and Comics studies as a whole.
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215 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 2016

About the author

Martin Lund holds a Ph.D. in Jewish studies from Lund University in Lund, Sweden. His thesis, titled Rethinking the Jewish–Comics Connection, is a study of configurations of identity in American mainstream comics by Jewish writers and a critical dialogue with the extant literature on the subject. In it, he situates the comics studied within historical American identity formations and Jewish American and American history, arguing that the oft-claimed Jewish–comics connection most clearly emerges as an expression of what it meant for the discussed writers to be Jewish Americans in their own time.

Lund is currently Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Malmö University. His main research interests are religion and comics, the representation of race and ethnicity in popular culture, and the role that the specific ethno-racial and socio-political conditions of geographical place play in textual production. He has published articles and reviews in academic and popular science journals on a range of subjects. Lund's current research focuses on representations of New York City in American comics.