“Master Race”: Graphic Storytelling in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

This chapter argues that an early graphic story, “Master Race,” published in 1955 by comics artist Bernie Krigstein and scriptwriter Al Feldstein, considered “one of the finest stories ever to appear in the comics form,” anticipated the emergence of the evolving and expanding genre of Holocaust graphic narratives. With memory as the controlling trope, graphic novelists and illustrators, through the juxtaposition of text and image, extend the narrative of the Holocaust into the present, creating a midrashic imperative to reconstruct and reanimate the experience of the Shoah. In recreating moments of traumatic rupture, dislocation, and disequilibrium, graphic narratives contribute to the evolving field of Holocaust representation by establishing a visual testimony to memory