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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - JOE KUBERT ON
YOSSEL
by: Matt Brady (Newsarama)
Every so often, one of the masters of the comics medium
will release a project which reminds the entire industry
and beyond of both their vitality, as well as the power the
medium holds. Joe Kubert’s Yossel coming in October
from iBooks, is just that.
Speaking in comic-ese, Yossel is Kubert’s own Elseworlds
or What If? story. IN this version, rather than becoming
one of the all-time great creators in comics, Kubert was
a teen in Poland, and saw the final days of the month-long
Warsaw Uprising.
It’s an idea that has haunted Kubert in many ways
over the years, one that has its genesis in his own story
of how his family came to America. “My mother and father
attempted to come to the United States from Poland just before
I was born, but they sent my parents back to Poland because
they thought my mother was so close to giving birth that
they didn’t want that happening on the boat,” Kubert
said. “My mother and father went back to their hometown
in Poland after coming all the way to Southampton in England,
my mother eventually gave birth to me. They went back to
England after that, and I was about two or three months old
when I arrived in the United States.”
The questions Kubert has found himself asking over the years
flow along the lines of what if, for whatever reason, his
parents had not left their town after they were refused passage
the first time? What if they had been refused passage the
second time as well? What would life have been like for the
Kubert’s young son in 1930s and 1940s Poland?
It was something that Kubert didn’t have to guess
at, really. “While I was growing up, some of the people
that had lived in my father’s town in 1939 or 1940
had come to tell my father and mother the things that had
occurred in the town after they had left,” Kubert said. “They
described to them the events and actions which were the beginnings
of the real heavy part of the Holocaust. Neighbors and family – uncles,
brothers, sisters, cousins, and so on, were killed. They
were just decimated.
“At the time, it almost sounded like a bad fairy tale.
I really didn’t understand the significance of what
was going on. Later on, my father and mother would sit and
tell my sisters and me about their upbringing and what it
was like, and made it very clear that neither my father nor
mother came to the United States to run away from anything.
They came here in 1926, which was a good deal of time before
the actual occurrences of the Holocaust began to happen.
“My father’s parents were pretty well off. They
had a small business with something similar to a general
store, and they did well. They weren’t in need for
anything, and neither was my father because of that. My mother’s
family too was pretty well off. My grandfather was a veterinarian
and he had cattle, so everyone was pretty comfortable where
they were. However, my father insisted when he got married,
that he wanted more opportunities for his children. So, despite
the fact that they were pretty well off where they were,
my father insisted that his family come to America. My mother
had family here already, but my father had nobody. He was
leaving his entire family back in Europe.
“Years later, I often thought about what the heck
would have happened if, for whatever reason, my father hadn’t
insisted on coming to America. In all probability, I’m
sure what happened to most of our family in Poland would
have happened to us as well. Within the last couple of years,
I felt that I wanted to put this down, and do a story based
on what might have happened had my folks not come to the
new world. Yossel is the result.”
(For those wondering, it’s pronounced “Yuh-sell,” with
a short u sound, rather than an o.)
The 128-page graphic novel is set up not as a linear comic
book story, but rather, as a sketchbook, a view of the events
of the Uprising, as well as life in the Warsaw Ghetto through
the eyes of a young boy, roughly the same age Kubert would
have been, had his family stayed. Like Kubert, Yossel likes
to draw, and loves the adventure of American comics.
“My intent was to get into the head of somebody, like
myself, who might have been in that kind of a situation and
had the same kind of love for drawing that I have,” Kubert
said. “Putting myself in that kind of situation, I
imagined that I would still be interested in cartooning and
comic books, and they were available at that time in Poland – things
like Flash Gordon and Tarzan were printed in European publications.
I felt that I still would have had that kind of an interest
that I had when I was a kid here in the United States. At
the age of two or three, that was the kind of stuff I was
starting to draw.
“I figured that in that kind of a situation, I’d
be drawing things that were around me, as I do today – whenever
I got to a museum or if I’m traveling, I always have
a sketch book with me, and I’m always drawing.”
In Yossel’s case, what’s around him is much
more stark than museum displays. Shown in flashbacks, Yossel
describes what has happened to him to bring him to Warsaw
on April 19, 1943. From being forced from their home shortly
after Kristallnacht, and seeing his parents sent to a concentration
camp, to learning of their fate from a camp escapee, and
joining with the Uprising, Yossel’s images are emotionally
charged and heartbreaking in their clarity. The story’s
ending is known, which only amplifies the tragedy.
“The date in the title sets the story during the Warsaw
Uprising, when the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rebelled, knowing
that they were going to be wiped out, anyhow, they tried
to fight back,” Kubert said. “The whole story,
while there are flashbacks, it all takes place during that
one day when the last vestiges of the rebellion were put
down by the Germans.
“I tried to design this book to get across the impression
to people who would be reading it that these were graphic
notes that ‘I’ had taken while all of this stuff
was going on. That was also the reason why I chose to do
the entire book in pencil, as opposed to finished inks. I
tried to combine more of the story with the art as well – I
have no word balloons in this. I tried to make it different.
I wanted it to be a hardcover, and I wanted to use the medium,
but not have it look like a comic book. I wanted it more
to look like a sketchbook and I wanted it to convey a feeling
of immediacy. I wanted people to be looking at these drawings
and feel like they were looking over my shoulder as I was
drawing them. That was my intent.”
The words of the story, while not appearing in word balloons,
are a combination of dialogue, description, and Yossel’s
inner thoughts, and are used effectively by Kubert as the
story progresses to give a feeling of urgency. Try as they
might, Yossel and his fellows know the end is coming, and
cannot stop it.
The sense of urgency is also something Kubert sought to
express in the art as well. “When I started out, the
drawings were more sketchy and less finished,” Kubert
said. “None of them would be what I would consider
as ‘roughs’ – there is enough detail and
information in those illustrations to convey what I was doing
and where I was and what was happening to Yossel at the time.
“As the book progresses, I started doing more and
more images in detail, and I felt that intensified the entire
story and kind of pushed it just a little bit more. I tried
to pace the drawings so that the intensity increased as the
climax of the book became more and more apparent.”
To give Yossel its accurate look, Kubert dove into research
of the tiem period, plowing through book after book. “I
must have gone through at least half a dozen different books
on the Holocaust, the pre-Holocaust, what the city streets
of Warsaw at the time looked like, what the wall around the
Ghetto looked like, what the people looked like, what the
guards at that time looked like.
“The time sequence, incidentally, of the entire story
is factual – it’s ‘as it happened, when
it happened.’ There are mentions made to the people
who were leading the rebellion in the Ghetto, and I refer
to them. There were a group of people who were put in as
figureheads by the Germans to ‘take care of’ the
people, so to speak, like a pseudo-Mayor and whatever. I
included all that information that’s I’d garnered – the
things that had happened, and the people that it had happened
to.”
While Yossel recorded dozens of horrific images in his sketchbook,
there were some, in particular that were very difficult for
Kubert to draw – after all, if he was projecting himself
back to this time, he had to project his parents back as
well.
“My father and my mother had told me the details of
what happened to members of my family during those times,” Kubert
said. “Now, because of how I had placed myself in the
story, was to put my father and mother in those very same
positions. It was a strange feeling, because I felt…funny.
If this had happened to my mother and father…I have
four sisters, and once is older, and she’s in the story.
My three other sisters, who are younger than myself, would
have never come to be if we had remained there. It was difficult
in doing this, to juxtapose myself, and my parents and my
sister in that kind of a situation, and in order to convey
that, and put that into pictures, was a little…jarring.
“Just as an aside, having come here from the Old Country,
I’d been drawing since I was maybe two or three years
old. Most people from the Old Country, if they saw a kid
drawing pictures at that age would have tried to dissuade
them, not wanting them to waste their time. It was a baby
thing to do. One or two of my friends in school who liked
to draw were pushed by their parents to do something, to
study at something that would one day allow them to make
a living. After all, how the hell were they going to make
a living drawing?
“My father was different My father always encouraged
me. My mother as well. They saw how much I loved to draw,
and they would do anything they could to help me and push
me more to do what I was doing. This was during the Depression
when there wasn’t much extra for doing such things,
but they were very proud of the fact that I could draw. Putting
them back into that kind of a position, and thinking of what
might have happened otherwise…I recall very vividly
all of the things that I did while I was drawing – the
fact that I was able to get my first job as a cartoonist
when I was eleven or twelve years old…and to think
of what might have happened, or what might have been, if
I was eleven or twelve years old in Poland – that was
what really pushed me to do this.”
Expanding, Kubert said that his desire to tell this story
didn’t come from a desire to tell the story about the
Holocaust as much as it was to explore what could have happened
to individuals, namely, himself, at that time in history
had they been there.
“Every one of us, finds ourselves at a point where
maybe two or three different directions could have been taken
at a particular point in your road. Take one, and your experiences
and life will be completely different than the others. Yet,
whatever the outcome, it’s all happening to the same
person. That same person might have the same kind of feelings,
the same kind of emotions, and reactions, but under entirely
different settings. That’s why I did the book as I
did. It was a journey for me – it is a what if? story,
but a journey for me to see what kind of things might have
happened, had I been on that other road.”
Yossel is Kubert’s first major solo work since 1998’s
Fax from Sarajevo, but continues along with his more human
themes. While Kubert’s war stories were often notable
for being quietly anti-war, Fax and Yossel go deeper, with
the latter being his most powerful statement without making
a statement. There are no anti-war monologues in Yossel,
only a world seemingly gone mad as seen through a young man’s
eyes.
“I find that currently, with Brian [Azzarello] and
the story he’s written for Sgt. Rock, and the things
that I’ve done before, like Fax and now Yossel, I’m
more interested in the characters and what happens to them,
than I had been before,” Kubert said. “So far,
the few reviews that we’ve had point it out, this is
a person that has gone through some terrible experiences,
and the reader can feel those experiences to some degree.
That’s what I think is effective, as far as the story
is concerned. The Holocaust again, is a backdrop. Everybody
knows the story – everybody knows what happened during
that time. But I think if it can be described in terms of
how it affected different people, or how different people
were affected by it, that’s a much more interesting
story.”
And Yossel won’t be his last in this particular vein.
Kubert is working on a new graphic novel set in Brooklyn
of the 1930s. “It will cover the full decade between
1930 and 1940, and will be set where I grew up in Brooklyn,” Kubert
said. “It will look at what happens when people grow
up in that kind of a milieu and what was going on during
that time, and focus on the crime aspects of it. Having grown
up in East New York and Bensonhurst, there were a lot of
things that were happening at that time, again, which I was
not really conscious of until I got a little older and started
reading about all of this and recognizing what the heck was
going on.
“My family – some of the members who were already
here that greeted my parents at Ellis Island, they were involved
in the garment industry, which was rife with stealing and
graft, and murder, and beatings. All this stuff was going
on while I was a kid. I would often hear people talking about
a nice dress or shoes that they got because they fell off
the back of the truck. In my mind, as a kid, these were some
of the luckiest people around. But I later learned a little
better. I’m just getting into it now, and I’m
really excited about it.”
Like his contemporary, Will Eisner, the 77-year-old Kubert
can still amaze even creators half his age with his output
and mastery – as well as work ethic. Yossel will be
one of two graphic novels coming out by Kubert in October,
with the other being the aforementioned Sgt. Rock, which
he penciled, inked, lettered and colored.
“I just keep working. I’ve said it over and
over again, but I’m probably one of the luckiest people
in the world, because sitting and doing this stuff is not
work to me. This is a matter of choice. This is where I’d
rather be, and this is what I would rather be doing. It’s
not difficult for me, and I count my blessings every day.
What’s amazing to me is that despite the fact that
I’ve been in this godammed business so long – and
I say that lovingly – people are still calling and
asking virtually every other day if I have time to do another
project. To still have my work be viable enough to be requested
at this stage, I really count my blessings.”
Yossel is due in stores in October from iBooks, and will
be priced at $24.95.
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