KOSHER MAFIA

A hitman for the Jewish mob sets his sights on the American Bund in Hazan’s Depression-set graphic novel.

At the height of the Depression, Ephraim Gold works as a hitman for Cleveland’s Jewish Mafia—the so-called Kosher Nostra—rubbing out rivals in the bootlegging business. When the mob’s nebbish bookkeeper Howard Berkowicz oversteps his limits by asking mob boss Moishe Levinson to do something about the burgeoning Nazi movement within the United States, Levinson orders Gold to make Berkowicz disappear. Instead, Gold—who agrees with Berkowicz about the rising Nazi threat—opts to defy orders and help the bookkeeper instead. After faking Berkowicz’s death, the two men kidnap a member of the German American Bund for information. It doesn’t take long for word to get out about what the duo is up to, and soon Gold and Berkowicz have the full brunt of the Bund, the Italian mob, and even the Kosher Nostra—whose business dealings with the Italians are more important than any loyalty they may have to the Jewish people—on their tail. What’s more, the fact that Gold no longer has the protection of the Kosher Nostra means that every criminal he’s ever tangled with suddenly has free reign to settle old scores. The full-color illustrations by Kivelä and colorist Wright are worth the price of admission alone, and Hazan’s muscular writing meets the story’s gritty demands. The book will satisfy the Nazi-punching fantasies of many readers, and Hazan leans gleefully into the premise: At one point, Gold facetiously asks Berkowicz whether they were going to “kidnap ourselves a Kraut” or “sit and debate this like a couple of Yeshiva virgins.” (In a later scene, Gold tortures a chair-bound Bund member while monologuing about the Plagues of Egypt.) The five issues collected in this volume tell a complete tale, but a few lines at the end suggest a bigger future for Ephraim Gold, one that the reader will hope to see in print.

A satisfyingly bloody criminal-on-criminal pulp tale.