Jewish Comic Book Artists

It’s not exactly a Huge Secret that the Jews Began and to this day still Dominate Hollywood….…it just happens to be a fact!!!

Jews seem to have dominated many of the other arts also …The World of Music particularly Tin Pan Alley, The most famous Comedians are/were Jews, The most Famous Magicians were/are Jews.

The immigrant’s from the Eastern Europe of the 1890’s while searching for "Der goldene medina” created another new industry…The Funny Pages, the Comics in the Newspapers, the Comic Books and later the Movie Cartoons…it all began pretty much in the New York Jewish Ghetto right around Delancey Street.

We have listed here many of the most famous Jewish Comic Book Creators/Artists/Writers/Animators …

• Ralph Bakshi: (born October 29, 1938) is an American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and (X Rated) adult-oriented productions . Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote. Fritz the Cat, Wizards, Lord of the Rings, American Pop & Fire & Ice among them.
• "Mel" Melvin Jerome Blanc: (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) Although he began his sixty-plus-year career performing in radio, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons...as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wilie E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon short films, produced during the golden age of American animation. He later worked for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons. Blanc was also a regular performer on The Jack Benny Program in both its radio and television formats (among various other radio and TV programs), and was the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures.
• Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (February 28, 1907 – April 3, 1988) was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.
• Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip Li'l Abner, which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips Abbie an' Slats (in the years 1937–45) and Long Sam (1954).
• Arnold Drake (born Arnold Druckman) (March 1, 1924 – March 12, 2007) was an American comic book writer and screenwriter best known for co-creating the DC Comics characters Deadman and the Doom Patrol, and the Marvel Comics characters the Guardians of the Galaxy, among others. Drake was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008.
• "Will" William Erwin Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
• Will Elder (September 22, 1921 – May 14, 2008 was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art but is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952. Elder was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003.
• Lee Falk, born Leon Harrison Gross (April 28, 1911 - March 13, 1999), was an American writer, theater director and producer, best known as the creator of the popular comic strips The Phantom (1936–present) and Mandrake the Magician (1934-2013). At the height of their popularity, these strips attracted over 100 million readers every day. Falk also wrote short stories, and he contributed to a series of pulp novels about The Phantom. A playwright and theatrical director/producer, Falk directed actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx and Ethel Waters.
• Jules Feiffer (born January 26, 1929) is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays. In 1986, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice. He currently works as an instructor with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton.
• Al Feldstein (October 24, 1925 – April 29, 2014) was an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. After retiring from Mad, Feldstein concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife.
• Milton "Bill" Finger (February 8, 1914 – January 18, 1974 was an American comic strip and comic book writer best known as the belatedly credited co-creator, with Bob Kane, of the DC Comics character Batman, as well as the co-architect of the series' development. Years after Finger's death, Kane acknowledged his collaborator's contributions. Finger also wrote many of the original 1940s Green Lantern stories after co-creating the original Green Lantern (Alan Scott), and would go on to contribute to the development of numerous other comic book series.
• Hammond Edward Fisher (September 24, 1900 (some sources indicate 1901) – December 27, 1955) was an American comic strip writer and cartoonist who signed his work Ham Fisher. He is best known for his popular long-run on Joe Palooka, which was launched in 1930 and ranked as one of the top five newspaper comics strips for several years.
• Max Fleischer (July 19, 1883 – September 11, 1972) was an Polish Jewish American animator, inventor, film director and producer. Fleischer was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios. He brought such animated characters as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye and Superman to the movie screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations including the Rotoscope.
• Isadore "Friz" Freleng (August 21, 1906[2] – May 26, 1995), often credited as I. Freleng, was an American animator, cartoonist, director, and producer famous for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. He introduced and/or developed several of the studio's biggest stars, including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam (to whom he was said to bear more than a passing resemblance), and Speedy Gonzales.
• Maxwell Charles Gaines (c. 1894 - August 20, 1947) was a pioneering figure in the creation of the modern comic book.
• William Maxwell Gaines (March 1, 1922 – June 3, 1992), better known as Bill Gaines, was an American publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. Following a shift in EC's direction in 1950, Gaines presided over what became an artistically influential and historically important line of mature-audience comics. He published the popular satirical magazine Mad for over 40 years. He was posthumously inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame (1993) and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame (1997). In 2012, he was inducted into the Ghastly Awards' Hall of Fame.
• "Rube" Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways, similar to Heath Robinson devices in the UK, as well as the Storm P devices in Denmark. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.
• Chester Gould (November 20, 1900 – May 11, 1985) was an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, which he wrote and drew from 1931 to 1977, incorporating numerous colorful and monstrous villains.
• Herbert Lawrence Block, commonly known as Herblock, (October 13, 1909 – October 7, 2001), was an American editorial cartoonist and author best known for his commentaries on national domestic and foreign policy. During the course of a career stretching into nine decades, he won three Pulitzer Prizes for editorial cartooning (1942, 1954, 1979), shared a fourth Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for Public Service on Watergate, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994), the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award in 1957 and 1960, the Reuben Award in 1956, the Gold Key Award (the National Cartoonists Society Hall of Fame) in 1979, and numerous other honors.
• "Al" Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.
• Abraham Jaffee (born March 13, 1921), known as Al Jaffee, is an American cartoonist. He is notable for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. As of 2014, Jaffee remains a regular in the magazine after 59 years and is its longest-running contributor. In the half century between April 1964 and April 2013, only one issue of Mad was published without containing new material by Jaffee. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, "Serious people my age are dead."
• Bob Kane (born Robert Kahn); October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998) was an American comic book artist, who with the belatedly credited Bill Finger created the DC Comics superhero Batman. He was inducted into the comic-book industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1996.
• Jack Kirby, (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. Kirby grew up poor in New York City, and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for National Comics, later to become DC Comics.
• Joseph "Joe" Kubert (September 18, 1926 – August 12, 2012) was an American comic book artist, art teacher and founder of The Kubert School. He is best known for his work on the DC Comics characters Sgt. Rock and Hawkman. He is also known for working on his own creations, such as Tor, Son of Sinbad, and Viking Prince, and, with writer Robin Moore, the comic strip Tales of the Green Beret. Two of Kubert's sons, Andy Kubert and Adam Kubert, themselves became successful comic book artists.
• Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and editor of comic books and magazines. His large body of work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book Mad from 1952 until 1956, and the sexy and satirical Little Annie Fanny strips in Playboy from 1962 until 1988. His work is noted for its satire and parody of popular culture, social critique, and an obsessive attention to detail. His working method has been likened to that of an auteur, and those who illustrated his stories were expected to follow his layouts strictly.
• Mell Lazarus (born May 3, 1927) is an American novelist and cartoonist, best known as the creator of two comic strips, Miss Peach (1957–2002) and Momma (1970–present). For his comic strip Pauline McPeril (a 1966-69 collaboration with Jack Rickard), he used the pseudonym Fulton, which also the name of a character in his novel, The Boss Is Crazy, Too.
• Stan Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber, (December 28, 1922) is an American comic book writer, editor, publisher, media producer, television host, actor, and former president and chairman of Marvel Comics. In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, the X-Men, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation. He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. Lee received a National Medal of Arts in 2008.
• Larry D. Lieber (born October 26, 1931) is an American comic book artist and writer, and the younger brother of Marvel Comics' writer, editor, and publisher Stan Lee. Lieber is best known for scripting the first appearances of the Marvel characters Iron Man, Thor, and Ant-Man; for his long stint both writing and drawing the Marvel Western Rawhide Kid; and for illustrating the newspaper comic strip The Amazing Spider-Man for many years and continuing as of 2014. From 1974 to 1975, he was editor of Atlas/Seaboard Comics.
• Martin Nodell (November 15, 1915 – December 9, 2006) was an American cartoonist and commercial artist, best known as the creator of the Golden Age superhero Green Lantern. Some of his work appeared under the pen name "Mart Dellon."
• Harvey Lawrence Pekar (October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-received film adaptation of the same name.
• Julius "Julie" Schwartz (June 19, 1915 – February 8, 2004) was a comic book editor, and a science fiction agent and prominent fan. He was born in The Bronx, New York. He is best known as a longtime editor at DC Comics, where at various times he was primary editor over the company's flagship superheroes, Superman and Batman. He was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1997.
• Joseph "Joe" Shuster (July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992) was a Canadian-American comic book artist. He was best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with writer Jerry Siegel, first published in Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938). Shuster was involved in a number of legal battles concerning the ownership of the Superman character, eventually gaining recognition for his part in its creation. His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness. He and Siegel were inducted into both the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2005, the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association instituted the Joe Shuster Awards, named to honor the Canada-born artist.
• Jerome "Jerry" Siegel (October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996), who also used pseudonyms including Joe Carter, Jerry Ess and Herbert S. Fine, was the American co-creator of Superman, along with Joe Shuster, the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most recognizable of the 20th century. He was inducted (with Shuster posthumously) into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.
• Joseph Henry "Joe" Simon, born Hymie Simon; (October 11, 1913 – December 14, 2011) was an American comic book writer, artist, editor, and publisher. Simon created or co-created many important characters in the 1930s–1940s Golden Age of Comic Books and served as the first editor of Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel Comics. With his partner, artist Jack Kirby, he co-created Captain America, one of comics' most enduring superheroes, and the team worked extensively on such features at DC Comics as the 1940s Sandman and Sandy the Golden Boy, and co-created the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and Manhunter. Simon and Kirby creations for other comics publishers include Boys' Ranch, Fighting American and the Fly. In the late 1940s, the duo created the field of romance comics, and were among the earliest pioneers of horror comics. Simon, who went on to work in advertising and commercial art, also founded the satirical magazine Sick in 1960, remaining with it for a decade. He briefly returned to DC Comics in the 1970s. Simon was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1999.
• Art Spiegelman (born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel Maus. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines Arcade and Raw has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for The New Yorker, where he made several high-profile and sometimes controversial covers. He is married to designer and editor Françoise Mouly, and is the father of writer Nadja Spiegelman.
• William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was a prolific American cartoonist, sculptor, and, late in life, an illustrator and writer of popular children's books. Best known for the picture books Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Abel's Island, and Doctor De Soto, he was also the creator of Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name. He was the U.S. nominee for both of the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as a children's book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.
• Saul Steinberg (June 15, 1914 – May 12, 1999) was a Jewish Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker, most notably View of the World from 9th Avenue. He described himself as "a writer who draws".
• Theresa Terry (June 15, 1914 – October 13, 2006), was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Teena. It ran in newspapers from 1944 to 1964. After marriage, she usually signed her name Theresa H. D’Alessio. In 1950, she became the first woman allowed to join the National Cartoonists Society.
• Morris S. Weiss (August 11, 1915 – May 18, 2014) was an American comic book and comic strip artist and writer. Active from the 1930s through the mid-1970s, he created the teen-comedy character "Margie" for Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, and was the final cartoonist on the comic strip Mickey Finn. He also worked as a writer or illustrator on numerous other strips, including Joe Palooka.