Abraham Kabibble, known as
Abie the Agent, was the first Jewish protagonist of an American comic strip. Abie's humorous caricature was a rebuttal of some of the
Jewish stereotypes in caricatures, and represented a moderately successful middle-class immigrant. Abie and his friends had many typical Jewish characteristics, such as their names or their use of Yiddish words and accents, they also lacked many of the negative or malicious elements, such as exaggerated physical traits, found in the depictions of Jews from this time. Abie was in many ways indistinguishable from other Americans. During 1917, the character enlisted in the
United States Army to help the U.S. forces in
World War I. The character lost many of his more typical Jewish characteristics over the decades, showing his successful integration but also slowly diminishing the particular features of this comic strip. The comic was produced by a Jewish artist, but can be considered discriminatory since it arguably only tried to promote the
cultural assimilation of Jews as Americans, at the same time distinguishing them from other ethnicities like Mexicans or African Americans who were often depicted negatively. That, however, was the focus of the strip. == In popular culture ==