Abie the Agent

Infobox Comic strip
title=Abie the Agent


caption=
creator=Harry Hershfield
status=Ended
syndicate=King Features Syndicate
comictype=print
genre=Humor
first=February 2, 1914
last=1940
website=

"Abie the Agent" was a popular early American comic strip about a Jewish car salesman by Harry Hershfield.

History

When Hershfield had success with a Yiddish character in his comic strip "Desperate Desmond", he was encouraged by his editor to create a new strip centered around Yiddishism and Jewish immigrants in the United States. Abraham Kabibble, known as "Abie the Agent", was the first Jewish protagonist in an American comic strip. [cite web |url=http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001016/buhle |title=Walker in the Imagined City |accessdate=2007-04-23 |author=Paul Buhle |date=2000-09-28 |work=The Nation] The car salesman debuted in the New York newspaper the "Journal" on February 2, 1914.cite web |url=http://www.toonopedia.com/abie.htm |title=Abie the Agent |accessdate=2007-04-23 |author=Don Markstein]

Abie was a positive rebuttal of the many Jewish stereotypes in caricatures, and showed with gentle humor a successful middle class immigrant. [cite web |url=http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9513/funnies.html |title='Featuring the Funnies': Exhibition Displays 100 Years of Comic Strips |accessdate=2007-04-23 |author=Craig D'Ooge |date=1995-06-23 |publisher=The Library of Congress] While Abie and his friends had many of the typical Jewish characteristics, from the names to the use of Yiddish words and accents, they also lacked many of the more typical or malicious elements usually found in the depictions of Jews, like their distinct physical traits. Abie was in many ways indistinguishable from other, white Americans, and was a prime example of the belief in the integration of German Jews in the society of the United States. In 1917, Abie even enlisted in the regular army to help the USA win World War I. The character lost many of his more typical Jewish characteristics over the decades, showing his successful integration but also slowly diminishing the particular character that set this comic strip apart from the others.cite journal |last=Moss |first=Richard |year=2007 |month=2 |title=Racial Anxiety on the Comics Page: Harry Hershfield's "Abie the Agent," 1914-1940 |journal=The Journal of Popular Culture |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=90–108 |url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00355.x?cookieSet=1 |accessdate=2007-04-23 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-5931.2007.00355.x] However, the comic can hardly be seen as anti-racist or anti-discriminatory, since it only tried to promote the assimilation of Jews as white Americans, but at the same time distanced them from other ethnicities like the Mexicans or the African Americans who were generally depicted in an inferior role.

The comic became quickly popular, and in 1917 two animated cartoons were made. No further spinoffs or much merchandise appeared though, and the comic strip went on hiatus between 1931 and 1935, to finally disappear in 1940. An indication of its popularity was the reference to Abie Kabibble used in "Animal Crackers", the 1930 Marx Brothers movie. In a time when Jews were often caricaturized and put in a negative light in America, the gentle humour of Hershfield and the positive depiction of a Jew as a successful lower middle class immigrant trying to integrate himself, shed a different light on the problems immigrants faced in those years, and is one of the reasons "Abie the Agent" has been called the first adult comic. [cite web |url=http://www.kingfeatures.com/history/historyeColorM.htm |title=Breaking Through the Color Barrier |accessdate=2007-04-23 |author=King Features Syndicate |authorlink=King Features Syndicate]

Notes

External links

* [http://lambiek.net/artists/h/herschfield_h.htm Hershfield biography at Comiclopedia]
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0306437/ IMDb entry for "Abie Kabibble Outwitted His Rival" cartoon]
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307019/ IMDb entry for "Iska Worreh" cartoon]