The Jewish Side of Wizard World Comic Con Philadelphia 2015

Today (May 9th) is the third day of this year's Wizard World Philadelphia comic convention.

Among the guests in attendance will be creators of comics with Jewish characters in them.

On Sunday (May 10th), 2 of those guests will participate in a session about golems in comics. The description of that panel follows.

12:00 – 12:45PM JEWISH SUPERHEROES AND THE GOLEM (ROOM 109) The Jewish comic book creators of the Golden Age of Comics (1930’s-1950’s) were inspired by a variety of sources. While many of these included cinema, pulp novels, and science fiction, some creators reached into their heritage to old tales of the Golem- a mythical clay creation come to life. Discover how the Golem myth inspired Marvel and DC characters like the Hulk, Thing, and Clayface. Jewish comic book creators Al Wiesner (Shaloman) and Joshua H. Stulman (Israeli Defense Comics) explain how the Golem continues to play a major role in their comics.

Other guests include :

* Neal Adams is the illustrator of the “Son O’ God” stories, which appeared in the pages of National Lampoon. You may read all of the Son O’God stories (as well as the story of how Adams was recruited to be the artist) at Dial B for Blog. Adams also illustrated the Batman story “Night of the Reaper” in which the vengeful Grim Reaper is revealed to be a Nazi-hunting Holocaust survivor. Adams penciled “The Last Outrage” (inked by Andy Kubert’s father, Joe Kubert) which appeared in both The New York Times and the final issue of the miniseries X-men : Magneto : Testament and which also appeared as a stop-motion video on YouTube.

* Peter David is the writer who infamously used the names of seder plate items for aliens in a Star Trek novel and who wrote the stories for The Incredible Hulk #386-387 ; see
http://www.leaderslair.com/noexcuses/hulk2-386.html andhttp://www.leaderslair.com/noexcuses/hulk2-387.html)



* Danny Fingeroth is the author of Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero.

Joshua Goldstein is the author-illustrator of Zayin : The Wars of Independence and Maccabbee Lady.

* Dean Haspiel is the illustrator of Harvey Pekar's autobiography The Quitter.

* Rob Liefeld is the illustrator of stories in the Youngblood series, which included the Israeli superheroine Masada.

* Joshua Stulman is the author-illustrator of the comic book series Israeli Defense Comics and is a contributor to the Jewish Comix Anthology.

* Al Wiesner is the author-illustrator of the comic book series Shaloman.