“The public,” he tells them, “is eager for a spectacle.” Paige’s agency “procured the actual costume” from the silent horror film Der Golem by Paul Wegener and he proposes that the massive first baseman Henry dress up like the monster during games and they market him like a sideshow attraction. But only God can grant a creature a soul and inevitably golems become destroyers.” Only a kabbalist who has studied for ages possesses such knowledge. To give a golem life, esoteric rituals are performed, ancient incantations are spoken. Traditionally, “a golem is a creature that man creates to be a companion, a protector, or a servant. And all the team needs to do is to dig back through the mysticism of their orthodox forefathers and create a golem. “Seven hundred dollars a game–that must be twice what you’re making now,” he promises. Paige is a classic snake-oil huckster-type (complete with checkered three-piece suit) who offers the Stars of David a ploy to make their intriguing team even more of a catch. “As a Star of David, he is Hershl Bloom… as a player for over twenty years in the Negro Leagues, he is Henry Bell.” He’s the team’s best player: when he’s not cracking balls out of the park, he’s cleaning up from first base.Īfter a particularly exciting game, a man named Victor Paige from the Big Inning Promotional Agency introduces himself to the team’s manager (and third baseman) with a business proposal. In fact, the team plays up this mystique: while the majority of the team is Jewish, their “clean-up batter” is a large, lumbering black man from Chicago who has essentially been given a stage name. “I’m not here for the baseball,” she scoffs, “but to see the Jews … thank you very much.” Despite this casual discrimination, The Stars of David have built up quite a following and manage to repeatedly sell out their games. “Well I’ll be, Hetty Douglass in a ballpark…” one fan remarks upon seeing an uppity woman sitting in the stands dressed in her Sunday best. Their exoticism provides viewers with not just a well-needed depression-era distraction but the means for an unfortunate turn towards xenophobia, revealing how thin the line is between curiosity and prejudice. This short graphic novella follows a ragtag Jewish baseball team called the Stars of David as they tour America in the 1920s.
Originally published in 2001, James Sturm’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing is a masterful but fleeting confluence of comics and American history, beautifully drawn in clean inky lines and paced with cinematic control.
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