Joe Kubert is such a legend in the comic book industry that his fame even reaches out into the mainstream with his School of Cartoon & Graphic Art. Besides his seminal work on Hawkman, Tarzan, Enemy Ace, Batman, The Flash and many more, Kubert created the characters, Tor and the Viking Prince. But his most fascinating and in depth work has come about since he became a septuagenarian. In the past decade Kubert has created the graphic novels, Fax from Sarajevo, Yossel: April 19, 1943 and illustrated Sgt Rock: Between Hell and a Hard Place
His latest work is the original graphic novel Jew Gangster from the publisher, ibooks. It is the story of Ruby Kaplan, a young man growing up during the Depression in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Kaplan decides to drop out of high school and go to work for the Jewish mob.
Buy Jew Gangster
Daniel Robert Epstein: Jew Gangster is a really great book. Was it autobiographical at all?
Joe Kubert: Only the setting because thats where I grew up. But it is not autobiographical or biographical. I became involved in other things rather than becoming a Jew gangster.
DRE: Did you hear about people doing that stuff?
JK: Oh yeah. It happened to people that I palled around with. A lot of things like that were going on around in East New York and that whole section of Brooklyn. Thats where Murder Incorporated started which was essentially made up of Jewish gangsters.
DRE: What made you decide to do this story?
JK: Im in a very fortunate position because I can select what I want to do, how I want to do it and when I want to do it. This just struck me as an interesting story and something that I had some background with. Its perhaps biographical to the extent that Rubys mother and father are patterned after my own mother and father. When I was a kid, my mother had a restaurant and we had the apartment in the back similar to the situation in the story. I had an older sister and in the story its a younger sister. The name of the main character, Ruby Kaplan, was the name of a guy that I used to pal around with. I felt I knew a little something about it since I grew up in that milieu. I hoped the other people who read it would find it interesting and it was a good change of pace for me.
DRE: I like the fact that you dont judge your characters. The life of a Jewish gangster didnt seem like the worst place to be.
JK: Having lived a little I find that often doing good and doing bad things are a matter of circumstances. The most honest guys I know, if they found themselves in a situation where they needed to put bread on the table for their family, they would be prone to taking stuff if they felt it was a matter of life or death. One way or another youd do what you had to do. If youre lucky and you live your life straight, then you dont have to worry about conscience as you get older. But very often most of us are not that lucky.
DRE: Im a Jewish guy from Long Island
JK: I guessed that from your name.
DRE: Yeah, its pretty easy. Kubert is a guess but Epstein definitely.
JK: I knew some Epsteins incidentally back in Brooklyn.
DRE: There are a lot of them.
I actually had the chance to become a lookout for a robbery but I turned it down.
JK: Well good.
DRE: Were you ever offered the chance to do something illegal?
JK: Yeah, when I was growing up in the early 30s, it was the Depression. Wherever you could make a buck, you scratched it out. But I was very lucky because from the time that I was a little kid, I was always drawing pictures. I was always content to go into a corner and just do my thing. That saved my life because during the Depression there werent a lot of things that young guys could do to make a dollar. Every kid sold newspapers but they cost two cents. So if you sold a paper, I think you got like a half a cent or even less for every copy you sold. That doesnt add up to a lot. So any opportunity where you could make a buck, you would do it. Like I said before its hard to turn something down when you really need it. Some of the guys that I grew up with spent some time behind bars simply because they got caught trying to make an extra couple of bucks.
DRE: What did your father think of you going into the comic book business?
JK: Most people who immigrated to the US wanted their kids to learn a trade so they could make a dollar. Most people from Europe would see a young kid spending an inordinate time drawing and would say, Stop wasting your time. Learn to do something. Be a mechanic or an electrician. Or learn to be doctor. Or whatever you can make some money at. I was lucky in that my mother and father recognized how much I loved to draw so they always encouraged me. I was extremely fortunate.
DRE: Did you draw Brooklyn and the Lower East Side from memory or did you take a trip down there?
JK: I havent been back to that section of Brooklyn in years, but Ive got a half dozen or so more books on Coney Island and every section of Brooklyn. I always do a tremendous amount of research. The whole idea is to make the drawings as believable as possible. Its absolutely integral to the acceptance of a good comic strip. Simply because most of the stuff in comic books is off the wall imagination, like superheroes, so in order to make them credible the backgrounds have to be believable. With a war story, if you put a gun in a soldiers hand and it looks like a little pop gun, it destroys completely the illusion that youre trying to create.
DRE: The artwork in Jew Gangster seemed to be a little less rough than what I had seen in your most recent Sgt. Rock book.
JK: Very often I find that the subject matter dictates the kind of drawing I do. A lot of it has got to be intuitive.
DRE: I thought it was a really hysterical to look at the credits of Jew Gangster and see that Comicraft has a Joe Kubert font.
JK: [laughs] Things have changed in comic books, havent they? When I started out doing this stuff, I tried to learn as much as I could about every facet of the comic book and cartoon business. A very important part of the business is lettering. Lettering is an integral part of every illustration that youre doing. Its as important an element as any part of the drawing in terms of the composition of a panel. So I learned how to letter. Having done it over a long period of time Ive taught a lot of guys how to letter. I was approached by the people who put these fonts together and they asked me if they could do this Kubert font. I was flattered as hell and thats what were using.
DRE: Would you rather have done the lettering yourself or was it just easier?
JK: Having that font eliminates the need for me to do the lettering. But its still a job of putting it together and setting it in the right place. The only saving grace is that you dont actually have to dip pen into ink and do the lettering.
DRE: I read youre writing and drawing a Sgt. Rock story right now.
JK: Yes the first issue came out in January. There will be six issues in all and Im working on the fifth issue right now. I think theyre going to combine them all into a hardcover graphic novel after Im finished.
DRE: Had you ever written Sgt. Rock before?
JK: Yes, I have. There was a time when Bob Kanigher was the editor as well as the writer and the creator of the Sgt. Rock character. He got the script all set and gave it to me to illustrate. Years ago there was a time when Bob was not feeling so hot so he gave up his position as editor. At that time, Carmine Infantino who was a very good friend of mine was also the head of DC Comics, asked me if I would take over the editorial position, which I did. Bob Kanigher continued to write most of the Sgt. Rock stories, but in the transition I probably wrote three or four stories.
DRE: So its not like youve written him that much.
JK: Yes but my insistence now is that I do my own writing despite the fact that Brian Azzarello did a wonderful job on the Between Hell and a Hard Place book I illustrated. Just to satisfy myself for good or for bad, I want to do all the stuff myself.
DRE: What makes Sgt. Rock relevant for an audience today that hasnt gone through a major war?
JK: The story that Im doing now takes place in World War II. Thats like 60 years ago. But people find themselves in very much the same position today as they did then. The place where the fight is taking place is different but the men are the same. It is also about how I feel, Ive spoken to a lot of the guys who were in the army and still are. We are the same people that we were 50 and 60 years ago. They find themselves in the army and it is not a place that anybody really wants to be. But they find they have to be and its lousy. Theres a camaraderie that occurs in the army thats really hard to equal any place else. To a great extent your life depends on your buddy and your buddys life depends on what youre doing. Very often that trauma of seeing somebody hurt thats standing next to you is something that you live with the rest of your life. That doesnt change. Maybe thats what makes it relevant.
DRE: I got to speak to Ralph Bakshi not too long ago when they released Fire & Ice on DVD which is the movie that he did with Frank Frazetta. I asked Ralph How can these guys who grew up in the Lower East Side have all this crazy imagination? He told me thats a question he himself has asked Frazetta a number of times over the years but Frazetta doesnt know. So Im asking you a similar question.
JK: I think its a matter of necessity more than anything else. During the time that I got started in the business, which was in the late 30s, it was still very difficult for anybody to make a living. The guys who were coming into comic books loved to draw. A lot of them were illustrators. We had geniuses doing illustration at that time for places like The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. When the comic book business opened up the fellows who had any predilection for drawing were starting to get jobs. It was a place to make a living.
DRE: Of course you have the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. I wanted to ask about what you thought of the Manga style that is so pervasive in modern comics now. I think even your sons have been influenced by it.
JK: Every artist is influenced by everything that they see around them that they admire. Whether they realize it or not they pull it into their own stuff simply because they admire it. Manga style and every other existing style, thats any good, is taught at the school.
DRE: The Manga style seems like a trend for American comics.
JK: I dont know about it being a trend. I know that many publishers would love to be able to handle that particular genre and make the money that Japanese Manga is making. But its a very difficult thing to do because Manga really comes from the inside of the country itself. Its more than just a drawing. Also theyre slanted heavily towards the woman reader. Theres something beautiful about the stuff thats being done. Once you get into it, it grabs you.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
His latest work is the original graphic novel Jew Gangster from the publisher, ibooks. It is the story of Ruby Kaplan, a young man growing up during the Depression in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. Kaplan decides to drop out of high school and go to work for the Jewish mob.
Buy Jew Gangster
Daniel Robert Epstein: Jew Gangster is a really great book. Was it autobiographical at all?
Joe Kubert: Only the setting because thats where I grew up. But it is not autobiographical or biographical. I became involved in other things rather than becoming a Jew gangster.
DRE: Did you hear about people doing that stuff?
JK: Oh yeah. It happened to people that I palled around with. A lot of things like that were going on around in East New York and that whole section of Brooklyn. Thats where Murder Incorporated started which was essentially made up of Jewish gangsters.
DRE: What made you decide to do this story?
JK: Im in a very fortunate position because I can select what I want to do, how I want to do it and when I want to do it. This just struck me as an interesting story and something that I had some background with. Its perhaps biographical to the extent that Rubys mother and father are patterned after my own mother and father. When I was a kid, my mother had a restaurant and we had the apartment in the back similar to the situation in the story. I had an older sister and in the story its a younger sister. The name of the main character, Ruby Kaplan, was the name of a guy that I used to pal around with. I felt I knew a little something about it since I grew up in that milieu. I hoped the other people who read it would find it interesting and it was a good change of pace for me.
DRE: I like the fact that you dont judge your characters. The life of a Jewish gangster didnt seem like the worst place to be.
JK: Having lived a little I find that often doing good and doing bad things are a matter of circumstances. The most honest guys I know, if they found themselves in a situation where they needed to put bread on the table for their family, they would be prone to taking stuff if they felt it was a matter of life or death. One way or another youd do what you had to do. If youre lucky and you live your life straight, then you dont have to worry about conscience as you get older. But very often most of us are not that lucky.
DRE: Im a Jewish guy from Long Island
JK: I guessed that from your name.
DRE: Yeah, its pretty easy. Kubert is a guess but Epstein definitely.
JK: I knew some Epsteins incidentally back in Brooklyn.
DRE: There are a lot of them.
I actually had the chance to become a lookout for a robbery but I turned it down.
JK: Well good.
DRE: Were you ever offered the chance to do something illegal?
JK: Yeah, when I was growing up in the early 30s, it was the Depression. Wherever you could make a buck, you scratched it out. But I was very lucky because from the time that I was a little kid, I was always drawing pictures. I was always content to go into a corner and just do my thing. That saved my life because during the Depression there werent a lot of things that young guys could do to make a dollar. Every kid sold newspapers but they cost two cents. So if you sold a paper, I think you got like a half a cent or even less for every copy you sold. That doesnt add up to a lot. So any opportunity where you could make a buck, you would do it. Like I said before its hard to turn something down when you really need it. Some of the guys that I grew up with spent some time behind bars simply because they got caught trying to make an extra couple of bucks.
DRE: What did your father think of you going into the comic book business?
JK: Most people who immigrated to the US wanted their kids to learn a trade so they could make a dollar. Most people from Europe would see a young kid spending an inordinate time drawing and would say, Stop wasting your time. Learn to do something. Be a mechanic or an electrician. Or learn to be doctor. Or whatever you can make some money at. I was lucky in that my mother and father recognized how much I loved to draw so they always encouraged me. I was extremely fortunate.
DRE: Did you draw Brooklyn and the Lower East Side from memory or did you take a trip down there?
JK: I havent been back to that section of Brooklyn in years, but Ive got a half dozen or so more books on Coney Island and every section of Brooklyn. I always do a tremendous amount of research. The whole idea is to make the drawings as believable as possible. Its absolutely integral to the acceptance of a good comic strip. Simply because most of the stuff in comic books is off the wall imagination, like superheroes, so in order to make them credible the backgrounds have to be believable. With a war story, if you put a gun in a soldiers hand and it looks like a little pop gun, it destroys completely the illusion that youre trying to create.
DRE: The artwork in Jew Gangster seemed to be a little less rough than what I had seen in your most recent Sgt. Rock book.
JK: Very often I find that the subject matter dictates the kind of drawing I do. A lot of it has got to be intuitive.
DRE: I thought it was a really hysterical to look at the credits of Jew Gangster and see that Comicraft has a Joe Kubert font.
JK: [laughs] Things have changed in comic books, havent they? When I started out doing this stuff, I tried to learn as much as I could about every facet of the comic book and cartoon business. A very important part of the business is lettering. Lettering is an integral part of every illustration that youre doing. Its as important an element as any part of the drawing in terms of the composition of a panel. So I learned how to letter. Having done it over a long period of time Ive taught a lot of guys how to letter. I was approached by the people who put these fonts together and they asked me if they could do this Kubert font. I was flattered as hell and thats what were using.
DRE: Would you rather have done the lettering yourself or was it just easier?
JK: Having that font eliminates the need for me to do the lettering. But its still a job of putting it together and setting it in the right place. The only saving grace is that you dont actually have to dip pen into ink and do the lettering.
DRE: I read youre writing and drawing a Sgt. Rock story right now.
JK: Yes the first issue came out in January. There will be six issues in all and Im working on the fifth issue right now. I think theyre going to combine them all into a hardcover graphic novel after Im finished.
DRE: Had you ever written Sgt. Rock before?
JK: Yes, I have. There was a time when Bob Kanigher was the editor as well as the writer and the creator of the Sgt. Rock character. He got the script all set and gave it to me to illustrate. Years ago there was a time when Bob was not feeling so hot so he gave up his position as editor. At that time, Carmine Infantino who was a very good friend of mine was also the head of DC Comics, asked me if I would take over the editorial position, which I did. Bob Kanigher continued to write most of the Sgt. Rock stories, but in the transition I probably wrote three or four stories.
DRE: So its not like youve written him that much.
JK: Yes but my insistence now is that I do my own writing despite the fact that Brian Azzarello did a wonderful job on the Between Hell and a Hard Place book I illustrated. Just to satisfy myself for good or for bad, I want to do all the stuff myself.
DRE: What makes Sgt. Rock relevant for an audience today that hasnt gone through a major war?
JK: The story that Im doing now takes place in World War II. Thats like 60 years ago. But people find themselves in very much the same position today as they did then. The place where the fight is taking place is different but the men are the same. It is also about how I feel, Ive spoken to a lot of the guys who were in the army and still are. We are the same people that we were 50 and 60 years ago. They find themselves in the army and it is not a place that anybody really wants to be. But they find they have to be and its lousy. Theres a camaraderie that occurs in the army thats really hard to equal any place else. To a great extent your life depends on your buddy and your buddys life depends on what youre doing. Very often that trauma of seeing somebody hurt thats standing next to you is something that you live with the rest of your life. That doesnt change. Maybe thats what makes it relevant.
DRE: I got to speak to Ralph Bakshi not too long ago when they released Fire & Ice on DVD which is the movie that he did with Frank Frazetta. I asked Ralph How can these guys who grew up in the Lower East Side have all this crazy imagination? He told me thats a question he himself has asked Frazetta a number of times over the years but Frazetta doesnt know. So Im asking you a similar question.
JK: I think its a matter of necessity more than anything else. During the time that I got started in the business, which was in the late 30s, it was still very difficult for anybody to make a living. The guys who were coming into comic books loved to draw. A lot of them were illustrators. We had geniuses doing illustration at that time for places like The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. When the comic book business opened up the fellows who had any predilection for drawing were starting to get jobs. It was a place to make a living.
DRE: Of course you have the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. I wanted to ask about what you thought of the Manga style that is so pervasive in modern comics now. I think even your sons have been influenced by it.
JK: Every artist is influenced by everything that they see around them that they admire. Whether they realize it or not they pull it into their own stuff simply because they admire it. Manga style and every other existing style, thats any good, is taught at the school.
DRE: The Manga style seems like a trend for American comics.
JK: I dont know about it being a trend. I know that many publishers would love to be able to handle that particular genre and make the money that Japanese Manga is making. But its a very difficult thing to do because Manga really comes from the inside of the country itself. Its more than just a drawing. Also theyre slanted heavily towards the woman reader. Theres something beautiful about the stuff thats being done. Once you get into it, it grabs you.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
jaworski:
Kubert is a god! I have a good buddy going to his school in Jersey......but anyways for those of you who are fans and haven't read "A Fax From Sarajevo", should pick it up; A must read for any fan of graphic novels!
filthyrich:
i went to his school, started with 200 kids graduated with 12! hardcore yo!