Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Alef Interviews: JT Waldman

It’s hard to imagine the bible as anything other than page after page (or better yet, scroll after scroll) of text. Leaving much to the imagination, the bible has never been a particularly visual narrative, instead relying on simple statements rather than alliterative descriptions, to say nothing of actual art. JT Waldman’s Megillat Esther changes that, by telling the traditional Purim story in a graphic novel that incorporates a wide variety of graphic inspiration. A self professed comic fan since childhood, JT sat down with Alef to talk comics, Judaism, and how a year in Spain contributed to one of the most creative comics of the last decade.

*To see full-sized versions of JT’s art, click on each image. To see more of JT’s work, visit JTWaldman.com, and MegillatEsther.com*

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So, who are you, JT?

I’m JT Waldman, I’m a comic illustrator and digital designer. I’m from Philadelphia and am a Bicentenial Baby. Most people know me from my graphic novel Megillat Esther. For the last 3 years I’ve been working on a multifaceted database of the Torah, called “Tagged Tanakh” and I recently started my second graphic novel, which will be written by Harvey Pekar and I’m illustrating that right now. [Editors note: This interview took place prior to Harvey Pekar’s recent death.] Right now I work as a freelance educator, and digital designer for JPS.

Tell us a little about your background with comic books.

I, like most Jewish kids, went to overnight camp, and went to overnight camp at a very young age. It was mostly a secular overnight camp. All the bunks were geodesic domes, and I was one of the youngest campers, I was 6 years old. That was where I was first introduced to comics, probably by an older kid – older to me was probably 13. And I remember it was Secret Wars #5. I had no idea who the characters were. I mean, I recognized Spider Man and the Hulk, but that was it. I remember just sitting on this bench and being engrossed by Secret Wars. I remember all the other kids were off playing soccer, or it was very cool to take cans of soda and putting a pinprick in the top and shaking it up and spraying each other, and they would be off doing that, and I would be reading comic books.

It must have been 5th grade when I picked up a New Mutants I was reading, and thinking to myself “I can draw that!” and that was the moment when I started copying what I was seeing, and it wasn’t about reading the comics everyday, but it was about making up my own stories. The only way I got through the High Holidays as a kid was by making up my own stories about the X-Men. At that point I’d already had my bar-mitzva so I could check out. I wasn’t in the kid’s section ‘cuz now I had to go with the adults, but I didn’t give a shit about the adults, so I stood up when I needed to stand up and in my imagination came up with a whole storyline that basically explained the origin of Rogue – we’re talking circa 1990 so the movies are a decade away and Rogue was still badass and a mystery.

Did you have a Jewish connection to comics beyond distracting yourself during the High Holidays?

I didn’t know, at that time, that all the characters were created by Jewish people. It wasn’t in the pop cultural zeitgeist that Jews created comics. I didn’t know who Will Eisner was, as a kid. Kitty Pryde was “out” as Jew, she was the only Jewish character in comics, when I was growing up. You could see her Magen David. I do remember being shocked when they did the whole Trial of Magneto, and the whole idea of this Holocaust Survivor thrashing back. And, I thought “Whoa, Magneto’s Jewish?” But, you have to remember, here I was this kid in Hebrew School in the 80s getting just “Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust” and all of a sudden it’s like “Augh, it’s invading comics, too!”

What happened when you got to college?

I was a dual degree major at the University of Michigan, and my attitude there was “I want to learn everything I can about art, except for comics, and I left comic books and was a sculpture major. I had already taught myself how to draw, and I didn’t think anyone could teach me how to draw in college, so I wanted to learn skills that I didn’t know how to do, and let those things seep into my drawing. Art school is all about people ripping you apart, and you learning how to defend yourself and how to justify your choices. Kind of like Yeshiva.

So, how did your Jewish identity come into play, then?

I discovered my Jewish roots in a Catholic country, and not in Israel. And, it was by being the first Jewish person my friends had ever met in Spain and people coming up to me and saying “I hear you’re a Jew, tell me about your people!”…I lived in Sevilla, which was the heart of the Jewish world back in the day, and there were no Jews left..It was by being in Spain and absorbing the art and culture there, and people asking me “What are you doing for Christmas?” and me saying “Well, I don’t really celebrate Christmas, I’m Jewish.” In America people would just say “Oh” and then walk away, and in Spain people would say “Oooh, what’s that all about? Tell me about your people! I’ve never met a Jew before.” And, because I didn’t know anythimng about it, I was kind of mortified because I was thinking “what the fuck am I doing, saying I’m something and not knowing anything about it?” So, then I was almost done with college, and I came back to Michigan, and was in a 5 year program and dropped my art degree because I didn’t want to spend any more time in Michigan. After living in Europe for a year, and then coming back to Ann Arbour and all my friends graduating that year… Spain taught me about the quality of life, Judaism (at that point in my life) had not showed me how to live and enjoy life Spain challenged my Jewish identity and inspired me to engage Judaism on my own terms, by making it a part of my life in a quality fashion, and not by doing the obligatory and divisive things that, you know tainted my associations with Judaism.

So, how does that parlay back into comic books, then?

What happened was, when I was graduating college, I said “What the fuck am I gonna do when I grow up? I need to satisfy my childhood dream of making a comic book. If I don’t, I’m going to be letting myself down.” I’d satisfied my parents dream of having a college degree, so after that it was like “Well, what am I gonna do now?” Blueprint’s gone, end of the tracks, so now I’m gonna lay tracks. Well, I’m gonna lay tracks for what I wanna do, and that’s make a comic book. I’d had an internship at Marvel Comic books in highschool, which was amazing, and really showed me what it would look like if I were doing monthly comics, and deadlines, and then “Chasing Amy” came out and things like that startedbring the consciousness of the rest of the world into the world of comics. I was looking at it as “I want to make a comic now. I know how it’s done at Marvel. I want to make something that’s meaningful for me, and not derivative.” So, I graduate college, and I think “What am I gonna do?” and I find out about this crazy Jewish retreat center called “Elat Chayim” and this was in 1998, so it was probably in its hayday, and it was there that I met this young Orthodox woman who told me the story of Purim. As an adult. And I thought “wow, that’s a crazy story.” The story I was told as a kid was “there was a beauty contest, and Haman hated us, and Mordechai did something” and she tells me this story about Vashti and these Eunichs and 75,000 people getting killed” and I’m thinking “whoa this is pretty racy!” And literally in a cornfield, on a Shabbat afternoon, I was thinking “wow, this would make a great comic.” I went back to Philli and had 3 odd jobs, and started doing research on the art history of the book of Esther. I had originally thought it was going to be a 22 page little comic, and that was it. While I was doing my research I found all these different translations of the text, and having lived in Spain I knew that translation means interpretation, and I thought “Well, wait a minute, I don’t want to base my comic book on someone else’s interpretation. If I’m gonna do my version of the book of Esther, I’m gonna have to learn Hebrew. And, the only place to do that is Israel.” So, I moved in with my parents, got a $1,500 Jewish Federation travel grant, and the plan was to go to Israel and go to Yeshiva, and learn Hebrew to make my comic book.”

Yeshiva?

I was the only person in my Yeshiva who didn’t wear a kippah and wasn’t a Rabbi or Cantor-to-be. And when they said “what are you doing here?” I said “I’m here to do a comic book.” And they went “hunh?” Everyone in Israel thought it was very quaint, and then everyone at home thought I was crazy! I was living in Israel, it was the first year of the intifada. For me, I created my own process. And, all these things were happening parallel to me were – Kavalier and Clay came out. Mel Gibson’s movie came out, proving that religion could be a mass consumed thing. And then Ari Kaplan’s articles came out in reform Judaism about Jews and comics. And everyone began to recognize [Will] Eisner as this sort of Jewish hero, and I realized that this thing I was obsessed with my entire life was Jewish!

So, what was the process for making Megillat Esther?

I did three years of research before I started drawing. It was in year three, while I was in Yeshiva, that I told my mentor there that I was making a comic book, and he told his cousin who was in town for the Jerusalem book fair that one of his students was making a comic book adaptation of the book of Esther. And, she said “Wow, that sounds great. That sounds really marketable.” And, that was the first time that someone had, externally, validated the idea, and I thought someone else was interested in the idea. I never thought that this would have an annual shelf life. I never thought, while I was making this, that I was making Judaica.

I had a few friends who knew I’d had such a great time living in Spain, and moved there and convinced me to go with them. My grandfather had just died, so I had a little money, so I lived in Spain for a year, and just drew, eight hours a day. I was a 25 year old, I had the best gym membership of my life. Everyday I would draw from 9-2. Have lunch with my friends. Digest. Walk to the pool. Swim for an hour. Draw from 5-9. Have dinner at 10. Drinks at 11, and party until 6 am, and then do it all over again. The book itself was very much aesthetically influenced by Spain. That was also the most active Jewish community of my life. Spain was the time I celebrated Shabbat every week. I became obsessed with Nachmanadies and the fact that the rise of Kabballah, and all the death … and in my mind Spain was this lynch pin in Jewish history.

Long story short, I came back to Philadelphia, had no money, so what could I do with the skills I had? I became a Hebrew school teacher. So, for three years, my peers were 7th graders, their parents, and my computer. I needed to teach myself the technical side of things, like scanning and the production of the book, because I didn’t have the production department of Marvel comics to put my book together. I had been rejected by every single Jewish publisher, and comic publisher. So, 2003 I went to comic-con and previewed it there, and just gave it to everyone. 2 years later I’m 2 weeks away from self-publishing the book when JPS, a publisher that had previously rejected me, decided to print my book. Talk about providence!…this book was the right thing for me to do for those 7 years of my life. Sofers, when they’re learning how to write the Tanach, start with Esther, because it doesn’t have god’s name in it.

So, if Sofers practice on the book of Esther, and then move on to the Torah, what’s next for JT Waldman? [Editors note: this question was answered, in part, after the death of Harvey Pekar.]

I still haven’t told my 5th Element. I still haven’t told my Avatar. You know, supposedly James Cameron wrote Avitar when he was a kid, which is why it’s such a stupid story. Another example is the 5th Element. Luc Besson wrote that when he was 15. It’s his childhood fantasy. I do have a Sci-Fi opera in me, but because I didn’t know how to tell a story, my process was “I’m going to learn by telling a story that’s been told for thousands of years, because if it’s been told for thousands of years, it’s probably worth telling.

My next step in learning how to tell a story was to work with a seasoned storyteller. Enter Harvey Pekar, circa 2004. I had sent Harvey a manuscript version of my book on a lark. He called me a week later to give me feedback and positive encouragement. I then got bragging rights to the 3 geeky friends who actually knew who he was!? When my book came out he was touring for The Quitter and his movie and I gave him a copy and he was super appreciative and just a nice guy. We ended up doing a 4 page foreword together for Arie Kaplan’s book From Krakow to Krypton in 2007, which led to the current project we’ve been working on since then.

I spoke to Harvey just before 4th of July, a week before he passed. He had just read to me over the phone a tweak to the script that he wanted me to incorporate and I was telling him about the latest rewrites I was working on and what I had just sent to the letterer. And then July 12th 2010.

Harvey’s passing was devastating to me professionally and personally. I went from being hevruta to hevrei kaddisha and am so bummed to not have my friend here to continue to laugh and learn with. All I did was talk Judaism and history with Harvey.

The book is a history of Israel through the eyes of Harvey Pekar. It’s also my first appearance in a book. I serve as the foil of sorts bringing Harvey’s opinions out and helping to frame it within a larger Jewish context. Here we are, two generations of comic book Jewish outsiders telling a story from the periphery looking in. Harvey’s wife, the publisher, and myself are dedicated to completing this book, so stay tuned for more details.

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Read more from Issue 17: People of the (comic)Book.

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