Publication date: April, 2005
Story: Steven Murphy
Art: D’Israeli
Frontispiece: William Potter
Creature design: Peter Laird
Letters: Eric Talbot
Letters page art: Steph Dumais
Cover: D’Israeli and Eric Talbot
“Kaddish”
Summary:
Frontispiece: On an alien planet, Donatello (wearing a
space suit) is surrounded by a gaggle of weird creatures. He recalls one of the first books he ever
read, “Strange Creatures from Time and Space” by John Keel, and how it inspired
him to look beyond established facts and consider more bizarre
possibilities. And after encountering
the likes of Triceratons, Utroms, fish-people and giant alien insects, he’s
glad he made that decision. In fact, it
reminds him of a story…
In a Hassidic Jewish neighborhood, in the dead of night,
several pharmacies and grocery stores are broken into. The police say they can’t find any clues and
disregard the case with apathy. The
local Jews, however, decide to form a mob and track down the thief. They eventually stumble upon Donatello as he
rummages through the dumpsters outside a scrap yard. Mistaking him for the thief, they
attack. Not wanting to hurt them, Don
ends up taking a few lumps before escaping.
Meanwhile, a lumbering figure trudges to the nearby suburbs
where it enters a home. The figure
brings medicine and fruit to the bedroom of a small boy named Ben.
Down in the lair, Don does some research and learns that
these thefts have been plaguing the Jewish community for some time. He decides to investigate after dark.
Don checks out the shops broken into and the only clue he
can find is dried clay. He hears an
alarm go off and hurries to the source.
He finds a trail of fresh clay and follows it to a blind alley, where it
ends at a small hole in the wall. A mob
is formed and they begin chasing Don, again mistaking him for the thief. Don scales the wall and picks the trial back
up, leading him to the suburbs.
Don is suddenly attacked by a huge Golem, upset that it’s
being followed. Don tries to fight the
Golem, but the creature is made of clay, so all his blows with his staff amount
to nothing. As the Golem throws Don
around, the mob catches up and discovers they were after the wrong guy. The Golem eventually discards Don and enters
back into the house where it has been staying.
Don follows and finds the Golem in a child’s bedroom,
giving medicine and food to the corpse of a young boy. The Golem explains that its creator, David,
brought it to life with the instructions to continue Ben’s care after he’s
passed away. Don explains to the Golem
that Ben is dead, but the Golem does not know what “death” is. Don tells him that death is when memory ends
and who we are ceases to be. The Golem
becomes very frightened, worried that now that it no longer has a purpose, it
will soon die.
The mob then rushes into the bedroom and the ringleader
says that the Golem is an affront to God and must die. Terrified, the Golem jumps through the window
and absorbs the mud in the front yard, growing to titanic size. Don can’t fight something so big, but the
leader of the mob tells him all he has to do is erase the first letter of the
word on the Golem’s forehead (the “aleph”).
Don erases the first letter of the aleph with a swipe from his bow,
changing the Hebrew phrase from “truth” to “death”. The Golem shrinks and becomes inert.
Epilogue: Down in the lair, in his lab, Don has gathered
the remains of the Golem as well as the laptop of David Chudnovsky. He learns that David was a mathematician
obsessed with the concept of pi. Knowing
that pi goes on forever, David felt it was the mathematical way of
understanding God and eternity. In his
journal, David explains that in Pargue, in 1580, Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel
created a Golem to protect his neighborhood.
The Golem was eventually killed and locked in the attic of the
synagogue. Then, in 1942, Hitler ordered
the synagogue to be inspected, but feared the attic and ordered no one to go in
there. This clue led David to the
remains of the Golem. Then, using his
knowledge of mathematics and science, he revived the Golem to care for his
invalid son, Ben. David was dying from
an incurable disease (the same disease he’d passed down to his son) and needed
someone to care for his child after he departed.
Hearing David’s voice in the recording, the Golem awakens
and rises from the table. Donatello is
shocked, as the aleph on his forehead still reads “death” in Hebrew. The Golem explains that it was never dead; it just thought it was dead and went still.
The Golem then wipes a layer away from its forehead, revealing that
behind the aleph is the symbol for pi.
Don asks what the Golem will do with its eternal life. The Golem says that it will watch over the
Jewish neighborhood, but more importantly, it will remember everything. Forever.
Turtle Tips:
*This story takes place in the “Mirage Volume 3” era.
*The Golem will appear again in TMNT (Vol. 4) #11.
*As explained in the opening editorial, a “kaddish” is a Jewish
prayer said after a family member has died.
*This issue also featured the bonus story, “The Question” by
Murphy, Lawson and Talbot, and a bonus character study of Donatello by
D’Israeli.
Review:
For the record, I’ve read “The Mothman Prophecies”. John Keel was a certified lunatic. Donatello should probably use more discretion
when selecting his idols.
Anyway, this was a pretty touching story and definitely
one of Murphy’s better contributions to the second volume of Tales of the TMNT. The reveal that Ben has been dead for months as the Golem has continued to care for
him was more moving than horrific. I
think a lesser creative pair would have elected to focus on the gore and
nastiness of that scene, but Murphy and D’Israeli understood that the impact of
that sequence was meant to be the emotional weight, so Ben’s decayed body is
seen in only two panels, either at a distance or partially obscured. It was tasteful rather than gratuitous and
made the moment much stronger.
The story in general just flows very well and it’s one of
Murphy’s tighter scripts. I complain
about him a lot, because when Murphy writes a bad story, it is a BAD story, but
when he hits the marks he produces some great one-shots. I think “Kaddish” benefits from having no
ulterior motives. Usually the worst of
Murphy’s output are the stories where he’s trying to use the Turtles to make
some sort of political or social or environmental statement on his behalf and the
storytelling ends up taking a backseat to his personal agenda. But even though “Kaddish” is steeped in
Jewish mythology, those elements are used to flesh out the story, not as some
springboard for Murphy’s latest outrage.
The Golem doesn’t have much of a personality, but being
the shadowy “monster” in a one-shot story, it could only get so much time to
develop. But you can still infer enough
from the Golem by its actions and limited dialogue to understand it has a good
heart and is capable of all the emotions and faults humans are, from violence
to fear. It only makes one cameo
appearance after this issue (actually, it made its cameo before this issue was
published; this issue was done to explain its deal retroactively), but I think
it could have made for a decent recurring ally.
As it is, the Golem joins the ranks of a dozen other fascinating
characters introduced in Tales Vol. 2 who are summarily never heard from again.
D’Israeli drafts some great pages, illustrating a superb
sense of lineweight, perspective, motion and “cinematography”. I haven’t read any of his 2000AD stuff
(because I’ve never read 2000AD), but he does good work. One of my favorite details was that Don
retains his swollen cheek and eye through the duration of the story (after
getting beaten up near the start). It
makes him look lopsided and fugly, but it’s refreshing to see uncharismatic battle
damage linger in a comic book.
There really isn’t much to gripe about in “Kaddish”. Some of the Jews in the mob talk like ethnic
stereotypes (I couldn’t help but read them with Jackie Mason’s voice), but I’d
like to think that was intentional, as it offers a bit of levity to what’s
otherwise a pretty grim story. Don’s
singing of a song I’ve never heard of goes on for way too long. Reading lyrics are great when you’re familiar
with the source, but if you don’t know the tune it really is an awkward chore
that takes you out of the story flow.
And Don sings a LOT of the lyrics.
Grade: A (as in, “At first I thought this issue was going
to guest star ZZ Top”.)
