Bright blue walls form a maze-like exhibit filled with colorful posters and glass cases of artifacts. Framed Sunday pages with comic panels hang, displaying portraits of Superman and various original copies of graphic novels.

From Nov. 1 to March 23, the Capital Jewish Museum hosted the Jewish Comic Exhibit, or JewCE, in D.C. as part of a nationwide exposition created by the Center for Jewish History, located in New York.

As visitors walk through the exhibit, posters are lined in rows that chronologically display the history of comic books. The display ranges from Yiddish comics of the early 20th century to the founding of comic book entities like DC and Marvel in the 1940s to modern graphic novels. 

While the exhibit has traveled across the country, coordinator Laura Hoffman wanted to add a special element for Washington D.C., she said. Hoffman visited local comic shops in the area and reached out to local comic collectors to get some of their pieces to display.

“I also talked to different artists, different comic store owners, lots of different groups to try and be able to tell a fuller, local story and that ended up being a real blessing,” Hoffman said.

Roy Schwartz, the co-curator of the exhibit, said that in each location, they try to create a more localized experience by talking to artists and collectors in the specific area.

D.C.-based collector Warren Bernard loaned the museum nearly 30 items, including Will Eisner’s WWII-themed cartoons and a comic strip about a Jewish deli. Hoffman said he spent over two hours meticulously choosing which posters and comics would fit best into the exhibit’s format. 

Curators were responsible for examining comic book history and petitioned to get certain pictures displayed; for example, the graphic of Superman with WWII American bombers was originally classified by the U.S. Air Force, making it difficult to obtain. The owners of the graphic novel eventually accepted the museum’s petition, and the WWII Superman posters are currently featured in the exhibit.

The JewCE was created following years of research from individuals from the Center for Jewish History and other Jewish organizations regarding the intersection of art, comic books and superheroes with Judaism. These experts deemed comic books an essential aspect of the Jewish experience that deserved to be displayed due to their unique Jewish heritage. 

“Jews weren’t welcome in most respectable industries, so if you were literary, if you were artistic, magazines were mostly a WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] stronghold,” Schwartz said. “The business world outside of the Jewish community would not involve Jews at all.”

Many Jewish artists then turned to the comic book industry, creating newspaper comic strips and eventually working for large organizations like Marvel and DC Comics. Many influential artists like Stanley Martin Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg — more commonly known by their anglicized names, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby — had Jewish backgrounds. Both Schwartz and Bernard commented on the similarities between the comic book industry and early Hollywood.

“Jews, with that kind of spirit, had no choice but to create an industry of their own,” Schwartz said, “which is a very similar origin to Hollywood.”

Schwartz said the exhibit is entertaining but also an important view into art’s importance in spreading societal values such as empathy. Comic books are for all ages, allowing their message to influence a wide and diverse audience.

“Comic book art, the professional term is sequential art, like any other art, is a tool of personal expression,” Schwartz said. “It’s a tool of building empathy, and it’s a tool of raising awareness, or the flip side, propaganda, depending how you look at it, and it’s a tool of building understanding and tolerance.”

Museum-goers can especially see this aspect of comic books in the WWII section of the exhibit, Bernard said. During the Holocaust and the rise of Nazism, Jewish comic creators put their beliefs on the frontlines. The display features the Superman newspaper comic strip dedicated exclusively to Superman’s WWII adventures from 1942 to 1945 and the iconic comic panel of Captain America punching Hitler in the face.

The exhibit explores how interconnected Jewish history, especially Jewish American history, and the rise of the comic book industry are. 

“It shows this continuum, going back to circa 1900 — that’s when the earliest works were — all the way through to today, that comics were an integral part of the Jewish experience,” Bernard said.