Here at Multiversity, we like to celebrate our Jewishness from time to time. Let’s face it – we don’t get to do it very often! But when we do, we might as well go all out, right? So for the Eight Nights of Hanukkah, we are going to present to you a Jewish super hero or villain that we greatly appreciate here at Multiversity Comics.
For night number two, we’ve got none other than the ever lovin’ blue eyed hero of Yancy Street: The Thing
When Benjamin Jacob Grimm was first introduced, there was a very large faux pas against revealing a character’s religion (despite everyone celebrating Christmas of course…), so it took nearly forty years for his Jewish heritage to come to light. Once it did though, he immediately became the single most prominent Jewish super hero in comics today, to the point of reciting the Shema (a traditional Jewish prayer) over a wounded friend and celebrating his Bar Mitzvah after it was realized that he had been transformed into his monstrous body for 13 years.
It would take more space than this blurb allows to sum up all the crucial Thing stories of the last few years, but check out Fantastic Four, Vol. 3, #56 (By Karl Kesel and Stuart Immonen) for his big, fat Jew-reveal as well as The Thing, Vol. 2, #8 (by Dan Slott!) for his Bar Mitzvah.
