THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING

History, baseball, golems and race

By Mike Whybark     November 11, 2002

Published last year and now in a second printing, James Sturm's THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING garnered critical attention outside the comics arena and in the light of Sturm's upcoming gig scripting the FANTASTIC FOUR for Marvel in a series titled UNSTABLE MOLECULES, this book deserves a review.

THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING is set in the 1920s and tells the story of an itinerant baseball team (think "Bingo Long And The Traveling All-Stars") whose primary ethnicity is Jewish; the team takes their name from this and are known as the Stars of David. They are approached by a huckster to add a gimmick to their play: the only African-American member of the team might don a costume to emulate the appearance of the Golem in the silent movie of the same name, a current hit. He does, it's an audience draw, and the team makes out - until they roll into Putnam. Things get ugly, but telling more would offer spoilers, so I shan't.

The book offers clinical presentations of a now-neglected genre of cartooning, sports comics, in which critical chunks of a couple of baseball games are presented, panel by panel, and this enhances the overall air of nostalgia which permeates the narrative.

The lead character's voice and narration is in the past tense; the book itself has been printed on tan paper; the shade evokes yellowed newsprint. Additionally, the art is reproduced in two colors against the warm tan of the paper: a darker tan serves as shading, much as zipatone once did. Black lines, areas, and hatching provide another level of density to the panels. The effect is of looking at sepia-tone prints.

Sturm has also lavished attention on several drawings of posters and printed ephemera of the time and place, and offers these posters as, in essence, chapter heads. Sturm's drawing is loose and expressive, but clean, and makes good use of his lies and blacks; the drawing is reminiscent of both Speigelman and, because of the back shapes and brushwork, Alex Toth.

The thoughtful and clever use of baseball and the Golem also beg comparison to Michael Chabon's two most recent works, the novels THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND KLAY, which draws on the Golem legend, and SUMMERLAND, which includes baseball as a theme.

Since THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING was first published right around the time that KAVALIER AND KLAY was achieving national prominence, I'd be surprised to learn that the books had any direct influence on one another. However, it would be interesting to learn if Chabon had the opportunity to read Sturm's work as he was engaged with SUMMERLAND.

Chabon's done some writing for DC of late, and Marvel has confirmed their interest in having him write for them at some point; maybe after the Pulitzer-prize winning author wraps up his work on the SPIDER-MAN script, Sturm and Chabon will get a chance to craft something jointly. Now that would be a beautiful thing.