Danny Fingeroth’s Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhro is scheduled to be published by Continuum Books in June. The hardcover will be priced at $24.95.
From the publisher: “In Disguised as Clark Kent, Danny Fingeroth reflects on the Jewish elements that, consciously or not, went into the creation of the superhero.
“In America, while finding a culture freer of anti-Semitism than the eastern European countries from which they emigrated, Jews still found themselves relegated to fields with a taint of shabbiness about them. The garment business was one. Another was entertainment, of which the outer edges of the publishing industry—specifically the pulps and comics—were a subset. Many creators of the most famous superheroes were of Jewish background: secular, religious, or both. Disguised as Clark Kent explores how the Jewish consciousness of these creators contributed to making characters such as Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man the most familiar popular culture icons of all time, in movies and TV, as well as in comics.”
Fingeroth was the Group Editor of Marvel Comics’s Spider-Man line, and is currently the creator and editor of Write Now! magazine. He also teaches about comics at New York University and The New School.