Michael Netzer: From American Superheroes to Israeli Spirituality

From JNS

Michael Netzer is a comic book artist known for drawing Batman, Spider Man, and Wonder Woman. In this 2025 interview, first published in Hebrew by Olam Katan, he tells the story of how a childhood in rural Lebanon led him to the world of American comics and, later, to Israel.

Childhood

A village in Lebanon

Netzer was born in Detroit in 1955 to a Druze father and moved to Lebanon at the age of three. He grew up in the mountain village of Deir Kobil, where he first began to draw. After the 1967 war, his mother brought the children back to the United States, where he discovered comic books.

Comics

Drawing the superheroes

As a young artist he joined the New York studio of the comics legend Neal Adams, and by his early twenties he was drawing many of the most famous characters for the major publishers. Still, he felt something was missing and left the industry to search for spiritual meaning.

A family secret

Discovering Jewish roots

Near the end of her life, his grandmother Hania told him that the family was Jewish: according to family history, she had been adopted by a Druze family after her parents were killed in anti Jewish violence in Lebanon. Netzer moved to Israel, formally converted to Judaism, and built a family there, while his siblings in Lebanon kept their Druze identity.

Read the full interview at JNS →

This summary was written by JIMENA and is based on “Michael Netzer: From American superheroes to Israeli spirituality” by Boaz Dromi, published by JNS (March 28, 2025). The original article belongs to JNS.