Kosher Mafia

by David Hazan, Sami Kivelä (Illustrator)

Overview

In Cleveland, Ohio, in 1936, Howard Berkowicz, the bookkeeper for the Jewish Mob finds himself on the wrong end of an enforcer’s gun when he tries to spur the Kosher Mafia into action against the rising tide of domestic Nazism in the German American Bund.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781545816684
Publisher:	Mad Cave Studios
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Series:	Kosher Mafia , #1
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	81 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

David Hazan is a comic book writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. After winning the Mad Cave Studios 2019 Talent Search, David exploded onto the comics scene as writer and co-creator of the hit medieval noir comic series, Nottingham, which is now entering its third volume alongside multiple spin-offs. David has worked with a number of indie publishers on both work-for-hire and creator-owned stories, including BOOM! Studios, Mad Cave Studios and more. His work has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards and the Comic Arts Awards of Australia and has been featured in the New York Times and even in a question on Jeopardy!

Sami is a comic book artist from Finland. You may recognize him from titles such as Deer Editor (Mad Cave), Abbott (BOOM!), Undone By Blood (Aftershock), Machine Gun Wizards (Dark Horse) as well as Beautiful Canvas and Everfrost (Black Mask). When Sami is not hunched over his drawing table or reading comics, he enjoys traveling, listening to metal music and watching TV with his wife.

Editorial Reviews

An action comic with heart—and some genuinely clever twists.

Publishers Weekly

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. [...] A satisfyingly bloody criminal-on-criminal pulp tale.

Kirkus Reviews

2025-01-31
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.

Kirkus Reviews