RUTHFULLY YOURS

New movie adaptations featuring comic book heroes Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America are all due out this summer and are generating tremendous media attention already. And that’s with the first movie, Thor, not arriving in theaters until May 6.

The launch of a new comic book series where the hero is tasked with defending Israel on the battlefield of ideas has gone largely unnoticed though. The Jerusalem Post first reported early this year on Capt. Israel telling its readers it was “…created by international Israel advocacy group Stand With Us, (this) is a new, unabashedly Zionist addition to the Jewish superhero pantheon. The creation of artist Arlen Schumer bears a strong resemblance to Captain America. See the entire article here: http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=204263

The folks at Stand With Us have issued a full-color, eight page comic book on the web. It looks every bit as good as something from the Marvel or DC studios. Take a look: http://www.captisrael.com/issue_1/.

Stand With Us (http://www.standwithus.com/) has definitely done worth taking note of before, but this project is a real home run. And with this summer’s movies it is timed perfectly.

Stand With Us deserves real kudos for this effort for several reasons. It’s the kind of innovative, accessible and positive type of project that the Pro-Israel community in the U.S. has been missing for far too long and needs to do much more of.

When Neal Gabler chose the title An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood for his 1989 chronicle about Jews and the motion picture industry he could have just as easily been writing about the American comic book industry.

Jewish artists, writers and publishers were behind the biggest names in comic books and they basically gave the world the superhero genre. Jews created Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and many, many others. Jews created Marvel and helped build DC. But, only rarely have Jews in the mainstream comics business chosen to utilize their skills in support of Jewish causes.

Maybe a few of Hollywood’s Jewish luminaries can take note of the excellent work produced by Arlen Schumer and Stand With Us and find a way to pitch in and lend a much needed hand to Israel in the public relations department. The Jewish State could definitely use it.