''Abie the Agent'' is an American
comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
about a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
car salesman
The automobile salesperson is one of many sales professions. The automobile salesman is a retail salesperson, who sells new or used cars. Unlike traditional retail sales, car sales are sometimes negotiable. Salesmen are employed by new car de ...
by
Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield (October 13, 1885 – December 15, 1974) was an American cartoonist, humor writer and radio personality. He was known as "the Jewish Will Rogers". Hershfield also was a columnist for the ''New York Daily Mirror''. His books ...
. It debuted in 1914.
Publication history
When Hershfield had success with a
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
character in his comic strip ''
'', he was encouraged by his editor to create a new strip concerning Yiddishism and Jewish immigrants in the United States. The strip debuted in the ''
New York Journal
:''Includes coverage of New York Journal-American and its predecessors New York Journal, The Journal, New York American and New York Evening Journal''
The ''New York Journal-American'' was a daily newspaper published in New York City from 1937 t ...
'' on February 2, 1914.
[''Abie the Agent'']
at Don Markstein's Toonopedia
Don Markstein's Toonopedia (subtitled A Vast Repository of Toonological Knowledge) is an online encyclopedia of print cartoons, comic strips and animation, initiated February 13, 2001. Donald D. Markstein, the sole writer and editor of Toonopedi ...
Archived
from the original on March 13, 2012.
The strip became popular and other cartoons were made.
[ The titles were "Iska Worreh" (Aug 5) and "Abie Kabibble Outwitting His Rival" (Sept 23).
After the strip dated January 24, 1932, the comic strip went on hiatus, due to a contract dispute between Hershfield and the syndicate, International Feature Service. The strip resumed in 1935 with the ]King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...
and ran until 1940.
The Sunday page included a topper. This was called ''Phooey Fables'' in January 1926, ''Dictated But Not Read'' from February until the end of 1926, and ''Homeless Hector'' from 1927 until the hiatus in 1932.
Characters and story
Abraham Kabibble, known as ''Abie the Agent'', was the first Jewish protagonist of an American comic strip. Abie’s humorous caricature was a rebuttal of some of the Jewish stereotypes
Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature.
Common objects, phrases and traditions which are used to emphasize or ridicule Jewishness include bagels, the complaini ...
in caricatures, and represented a moderately successful middle-class immigrant. Abie and his friends had many typical Jewish characteristics, such as their names or their use of Yiddish words and accents, they also lacked many of the negative or malicious elements, such as exaggerated physical traits, found in the depictions of Jews from this time. Abie was in many ways indistinguishable from other Americans. During 1917, the character enlisted in the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
to help the U.S. forces in World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
The character lost many of his more typical Jewish characteristics over the decades, showing his successful integration but also slowly diminishing the particular features of this comic strip. The comic was produced by a Jewish artist, but can be considered discriminatory since it arguably only tried to promote the cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's majority group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group whether fully or partially.
The different types of cultural assi ...
of Jews as Americans, at the same time distinguishing them from other ethnicities like Mexicans or African Americans who were often depicted negatively. That, however, was the focus of the strip.[
]
In popular culture
An indication of the strip's popularity was the reference to ‘Abe Kabibble’ in the 1930 Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act that was successful in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in motion pictures from 1905 to 1949. Five of the Marx Brothers' thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute (AFI) ...
movie ''Animal Crackers
An animal cracker is a particular type of cracker, baked in the shape of an animal, usually an animal either at a zoo or a circus, such as a lion, a tiger, a bear, or an elephant. The most common variety is light-colored and slightly sweet, but ...
''.[
Two Animated shorts were made in 1917 by ]International Film Service
International Film Service (IFS) was an American animation studio created to exploit the popularity of the comic strips controlled by William Randolph Hearst.
History
In 1914, William Randolph Hearst expanded his International News Service wir ...
.
See also
*''Edge City
''Edge city'' is a term that originated in the United States for a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban residential or rur ...
''
References
External links
Hershfield biography at Comiclopedia
IMDb entry for ''Abie Kabibble Outwitted His Rival'' cartoon
IMDb entry for ''Iska Worreh'' cartoon
{{King Features Syndicate Comics
American comic strips
Fictional American Jews
Fictional salespeople
Gag-a-day comics
1914 comics debuts
1940 comics endings
American comics characters
Male characters in comics
Comics characters introduced in 1914
Comic strips started in the 1910s
Fictional immigrants to the United States
Fictional American Jews in comics
Jewish-related comics