Villain

Greg at Howling Curmudgeons tells a story over dinner.

One of my friends likes to hear me tell stories from comics. Yes, this confuses me, too. Last night, at dinner, I asked her what she wanted to hear. She told me she liked hearing about the bad guys.

“OK,” I said, “I'll tell you the story about where Darth Vader comes from.”

This is the story I told.

It starts, as so many things do, with a Jew.

[My friend is Jewish, and this was guaranteed to make her laugh.)

His name was Jacob Kurtzberg, and like a lot of first and second generation Jewish immigrants in the late 1930s, he went into the new industry of comic books, where he used the name “Jack Kirby”.

No, not Doctor Doom, True Believers. Greg has a different theory. And he's right.