Are Two Of The World's Greatest Evil Geniuses...Jewish?

Say it isn't so!

Clearly Luthor is not an adherent of any organized religion. However, Elliot S! Maggin, an observant Jew who is one of Superman's most popular and influential writers, has stated that Luthor is a non-observant Jew. Given Lex Luthor's utter disinterest in traditional organized religion and moral value systems, it is not surprising that his character never refers to any religious upbringing or religious ethnicity.

There seems to be little printed textual support for identifying Luthor as Jewish. But the theory certainly is plausible in a world where many of history's real-life brilliant world-changing atheists (or agnostics) have been Jewish, including Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Noam Chomsky, etc. (The obvious difference, of course, is that Luthor is evil while these other individuals, regardless of whether or you agree with them or not, were not evil.)

And if you are shocked to hear that Lex Luthor may be Jewish, hold onto your hats...it may be that Gargamel, the villianous enemy of the smurfs may be Jewish too:

What's worse, the evidence is both circumstantial and insulting: Gargamel is drawn like most anti-semitic propaganda (balding, big nose), his end goal is money, he's a momma's boy... It's all pretty upsetting. Because Jew or not, someone out there is really bigoted — the creator of the cartoon or the creator of the theory. Probably a little of both really. All of which leaves us with the vague feeling Gargamel may be Jewish topped by the desperate hope that he's not.

Of course, you can always check out The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters and really go to town on this, with Jewish superheroes like The Thing from Fantastic Four--to Legion, who is part Jewish, part Muslim (long story).

Me--I'll stick to being a hero to my kids.
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