“This is not the New York I saw in the micro-film library!” yells Kamandi in a raft, surveying the drowning Statue of Liberty, “The city is gone!—Covered by the sea—!” Jack Kirby’s “Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth” drawing (1972) is on view in Masters of American Comics at the Jewish Museum, and the damage it deals to New York isn’t without irony. The exhibit focuses on comic strips produced after the 1950s, while the brother-show (both are decidedly all-men’s clubs) at the Newark Museum showcases pre-’50s strips. Like the Kamandi drawing, many of the strips carry sobering narratives, like Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy’s drawing of Captain Marvel Jr.—clad in a flowing cape with a Gatorade-like logo on his chest, he stands over a fallen villain. “Come on, you Nazi man, we’ve got a date with the American Embassy,” the superhero says. Many of the early comic book artists, besides Kirby and Raboy, were Jewish: Siegel and Shuster (Superman), Eisner (The Spirit), and Finger and Kane (Batman). These teenagers from immigrant families drew superheroes to beat up on the Nazis that were murdering their fellow Jews abroad. Particularly after the controversial Danish cartoons, this exhibit is especially imperative. 

Through Jan. 28. The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave. (at 92nd St.),
212-423-3200, $7.50-$12. www.thejewishmuseum.org.