Jew Gangster

Jew Gangster 

By Joe Kubert (ibooks Graphic Novels)
ISBN 1-5968-7827-4

Joe Kubert is a comics legend who just seems to get better and better. This offering harks back to his early childhood to tell the simple tale of young Ruby Kaplan, a smart kid living a poor life in depression-era Brooklyn. Seduced away from his loving family by the easy life he sees the neighbourhood gangsters living, he becomes a rising star of the underworld, only to have it turn to ashes in his mouth.

The story is not new, and the iconic setting is one beloved of many comics legends including Will Eisner and Jack Kirby, whose creative sparks also first flickered in those ominous ghettoes in the 1920s and 1930s, but Kubert’s take is a pared-down, parable-like examination of roads not taken rather than Eisner’s scrutiny of the human condition or Kirby’s irrepressible faith in the human spirit to overcome odds. In such circumstances, anybody could have become Ruby Kaplan, and the creator probably had many friends who did.

As ever, the artist’s laconic mastery of black line, cinematic composition and especially individual expression are an effortless pageant of subtle efficiency. You don’t read Kubert, you breathe it in, all but unaware of the effect his art has on you till you blink again and realise that you’ve reached the end. Power, tension, action, empathy and terror all wash over you unbidden, as the ruthlessly pared down pages practically turn themselves. This is what comic storytelling should be, and this is a book you should know.

© 2005 Joe Kubert. All Rights Reserved.