METAPHENOMENAL MUSINGS

Thanks to this post by Sean Collins, I was made aware of two recent online essays on the subject of Jewish fantasy, one by Michael Weingrad at the Jewish Review of Books, where he asks "Why There is No Jewish Narnia," and another by Spencer Ackerman, who replies that "Jewish Narnia is called Marvel Comics."

Sean then asks for responses from critics knowledgeable in fantasy. As most comics-critics try to remain ignorant of the complex histories of the metaphenomenal genres for fear of being labelled nerds or geeks, I guess it falls to me.

Short answer: Weingrad's mostly right, Ackerman's mostly wrong.

As some of Ackerman's respondents do point out in his comments-thread, Weingrad never says that Jews don't write any fantasies at all. He gives ample evidence of other areas of metaphenomenal fiction in which Jewish creators have excelled, not least science fiction, but he stresses that until fairly recently there have not been many who were known for doing so-called "high-fantasy" after the fashion of Lewis, Tolkien, or even (though Weingrad doesn't mention this one) Robert E. Howard.

I would fault Weingrad for not defining his terms for "fantasy" a little more closely, though. Basically "high fantasy" is defined by what J.R.R. Tolkien termed the presence of a "secondary world" which is necessarily based on the author's experience of the "primary world" but which allows greater access to magical phenomena and numinous presences. Secondary-world works fall into three categories:

TYPE 1: the secondary world exists within the remote vestiges of the primary world. This is the type one sees in most ancient epic and romance, ranging from the Gilgamesh Epic to the Arabian Nights to the Morte D'Arthur.

TYPE 2: the secondary world exists completely apart from the author's primary world, having its own independent history and never coming into contact with the primary world. This is the domain of Tolkien and Howard.

TYPE 3: the secondary world has its own history that is independent of the primary world but exists alongside the primary world, and it's possible for characters in one world to 'cross over' into the other. This is the domain of Lewis' Narnia.

Now, even a quick comparison between the generic domain of the superhero-- whether the spawn of the Golden Age or of today-- shows no real points of comparison. Then and now, most costumed superhero stories take place firmly within the primary world shared by authors and readers. Further, though a fair percentage of superheroes invoke magic and numinous beings as sources of power, even magicians like Doctor Strange don't hang their hats in the otherworlds full-time. If Doctor Strange is like any of the high-fantasy types mentioned above, he probably most resembles Type 3. But the wild fever-dream worlds of Doctor Strange are really not secondary worlds with their own histories, as Narnia is.

Science-fictional superheroes like Superman, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, whom Akerman invokes, are even less related to the high fantasy genre. They take their chief inspiration from American SF's articulation of the concept of the mutant or freak given super-powers by science, and have no more relation to any secondary world than does Wells' INVISIBLE MAN.

Comic books in turn took this sci-fi trope and melded it strongly with the trope of the crimefighting crusader as exemplified by earlier ancestors like the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, the Phantom, the Shadow, et al. However, Golden Age heroes dominantly keep their adventures confined to the readers' primary world. Ironically, only one creator of a major superhero figure has his hero come from a Type 1 secondary world, a world he imbued with some consistency of thought like that of the prose authors mentioned, and that creator happens to be a goy: William Moulton Marston of WONDER WOMAN fame!

Further, given that the model for most superheroes was one most strongly influenced by the pulp crusaders and related types, I find it hard to give sole credit for the superhero's development to that small collection of unquestionably talented Jewish writers and artists of the Golden Age. I don't dispute that it's *significant* that these Jewish creators expressed themselves through the genre of the heroic crimefighter. But one cannot see that expression in its own little "pocket universe," so to speak. Unless one can demonstrate that every significant creator of the pulp crusaders was also secretly Jewish-- that means Fran Striker, Kenneth Robeson, Lee Falk, and many many others-- then the genesis of the superhero has to be seen less as a unique Jewish creation and rather as an adaptation of an ongoing pulp aesthetic. Perhaps one can see the comics-superhero world as having been born from the death-throes of the pulp-world, as the antediluvian world is born from the one that God destroys in that other Genesis.

Offhand I can't think of any superhero fantasies that have taken place in Type 2 secondary worlds. The Marvel adaptation of CONAN is almost certainly the first one to have sold well, but most attempts to do original high fantasies in the comics have had at best marginal success.

Unless I'm missing something--?