Word: fagin
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...Fagin" takes the famous sly criminal character from Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist," referred to throughout the book "the Jew," and fills in his back-story. This way Eisner hopes to accomplish a corrective to Dickens' negative stereotype. Moses Fagin's story parallels that of Oliver Twist in his being orphaned at a young age, trapped in a rigidly stratified society and at the mercy of its caprices. Crime, "the trade of the streets," becomes his only option and he soon finds himself shipped off to the colonies as a convict. Years later he returns to London and organizes a group...
...TIME.comix: What is the story behind "Fagin...
...Eisner: Fagin started a number of years ago when I was looking through the European mythologies, faerie tales and so forth, and it struck me that there was a thread of stereotype in all of those. And I believe strongly that there's nothing wrong with stereotype. Stereotype has been made a bad word. But it's not a bad [thing] unless it's used badly -- for evil purposes. But [sometimes] it's the only way you can communicate, visually. At any rate, one of the books I turned my hand onto was "Oliver Twist." In reading it again...
...Fagin shows Oliver the ways of pick-pocketing in "Fagin...
...TIME.comix: As you say in the introduction to "Fagin," you have your own history with stereotype, most particularly in the character Ebony White, a big-lipped, saucer-eyed African-American comedic sidekick to the Spirit. Although Ebony evolved with greater sensitivity in the latter half of the series' life, do you see "Fagin" as a kind of mea culpa...