When Hershfield had success with a Yiddish character in his comic strip Desperate Desmond, 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 on February 2, 1914. The strip became popular, and during 1917 two animated cartoons were made. The titles were "Iska Worreh" and "Abie Kabibble Outwitting His Rival". 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, and ran until 1940. The Sunday page included a topper. This was called Phooy 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 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, and he was a prime example of the belief in the integration of German Jews into U.S. society. During 1917, the character enlisted in the Army to help the U.S. forces in World War I. 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 assimilation 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.
