The Many Lives of the Ragman: Jews, Comics, and Secondhand Goods

In 1976, DC Comics legends Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert created a superhero called Ragman. Rory Regan, the son of a dealer in second-hand goods, or “junk,” finds a suit of rags that belonged to his father, puts it on, and develops super-powers.

Years after fans of the comic noticed that Ragman’s origins seemed to indicate that he was Jewish, a 1991 reboot of the Ragman comic emphasized the hero’s Jewishness, in various heavy-handed ways. Ragman’s superhero suit was created by the same Prague rabbi who built the Golem. Ragman seeks counsel from a rabbi as he comes to terms with his superpowers. In changing Ragman’s origins, and surrounding his exploits with scenes from Jewish history, the comic affirmed the connection between Jews and the scrap business.

Investigating Ragman reveals connections between two quintessentially “Jewish” businesses: scrap and comics. “The Many Lives of the Ragman” will trace the shared history of these two economic niches, in the context of recent scholarship on the idea of the “Jewish business.” Both the comic-book and scrap industries had an air of disreputability, but in the pre-World War II era, Jews gravitated to these (among other) fields out of necessity, and turned them into thriving economic niches.

Despite the economic success of individual Jews in comics and scrap, leaders in both fields often tried to obscure their Jewishness as a business strategy. By the time of the 1991 Ragman reboot, however, Jewishness in comics was more visible than ever, reflected in the acclaimed work of Art Spiegelman and Harvey Pekar. During the same period, scrap dealers began to acknowledge their roots, as well.