When Boston University alum Jordan Gorfinkel first started drawing comics for The Daily Free Press, he received much less than rave reviews.
“I came into the FreeP offices to retrieve my originals and found them pasted on the office walls, scrawled with derisive comments,” Gorfinkel, a 1990 College of Communication graduate, said in an email. “I proceeded to take down the cartoons in front of the staff, who, to their credit, never looked up at me. Nothing more humbling than that.”
Today, Gorfinkel is a commercially successful comic book and comic strip artist. The Jewish Museum in Munich recently asked him to create an exhibit for the museum’s March 22 grand opening. His comic strip uses characters from his daily cartoon strip to chronicle the history of Munich’s Jewish people from the medieval ages to the present.
“It’s a real out-of-the box way of thinking,” said Shira Dicker, Gorfinkel’s publicist, about the exhibit. “He was very honored as an American-Jewish artist.”
The museum selected Gorfinkel as part of its plan to include comic art in a permanent exhibit.
“We [sought] a media which could also attract a younger audience,” Jewish Museum Foundation Director Bernhard Purin said in an email. “Thanks to the comics, visitors realize that Jewish culture in this city is not only a historical phenomenon, but there is also a Jewish presence and future without neglecting the burden of the past.”
Purin said the museum chose Gorfinkel because of his comic strip “Everything’s Relative.” Dicker said Gorfinkel’s strip, which he created almost 10 years ago, appears in about 10 national newspapers, including The Jewish Week, a New York-based paper. It also appears in other U.S. cities and in international papers in Germany and Israel.
The comic chronicles the story of five young adults and their landlords who are Holocaust survivors, Bubs and Zayds, grandparent-type figures who balance modern life and faith with humor and drama, Gorfinkel said.
Gorfinkel said he modeled the comic strip based on his experiences, using his maternal grandfather, David “Zayde” Rosenberg, as a model.
The strip is also modeled after the wholesome family-oriented comic “For Better or For Worse” by Lynn Johnston, Gorfinkel said.
Johnston said Gorfinkel’s strip is humorous, well-drawn and appropriately dedicated to being Jewish in a modern world.
“His work compares to mine in that it’s a progressive family chronicle which spans many generations,” Johnston said in an email. “Jordan doesn’t shy away from ‘controversy’ in that he honestly addresses everyday complexities of life, in all its guises.”
By addressing Jewish issues through humor, Gorfinkel’s comic strip is popular among the international Jewish community, Dicker said.
Aisde from writing the comic strip, Gorfinkel is also an editor for DC Comics. Gorfinkel said he stays busy working on comics and entertainment projects, including a graphic novel during the day and “Everything’s Relative” at night.
“I don’t sleep much,” Gorfinkel said. “Yes, I am still living like a college student — only with four kids and a mortgage.”
As part of his work with DC Comics, Gorfinkel edited parts of the Batman series. One of his edited Batman stories became the basis for scenes in the 2005 film Batman Begins. He also created “Birds of Prey,” the longest-running female superhero comic, with the exception of “Wonder Woman.”
Gorfinkel said while he admired comics since childhood, he never intended to become a comic artist while he was an advertising major at BU.
“I’m still applying what I learned in advertising, marketing, journalism and my other COM classes to my professional pursuits to this day,” Gorfinkel said. “Every scrap was valuable — wrong road, right direction.”