Will Eisner
Will Eisner | |
---|---|
Born | William Erwin Eisner March 6, 1917 New York City, U.S. |
Died | January 3, 2005 Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, U.S. | (aged 87)
Area(s) | Cartoonist, Publisher |
Pseudonym(s) | William Erwin Maxwell[1] |
Notable works | |
www.willeisner.com |
William Erwin Eisner (
1917–1936: Early life
Family background
Eisner's father, Shmuel "Samuel" Eisner, was born March 6, 1886, in
Eisner's mother, Fannie Ingber, was born to
Shmuel and Fannie, who were distant relatives, met through family members.[5] They had three children: son Will Erwin, born on his father's birthday in 1917; son Julian, born February 3, 1921; and daughter Rhoda, born November 2, 1929.[6]
Early life
Eisner was born in Brooklyn. He grew up poor, and the family moved frequently.[6] Young Eisner often got into physical confrontations when subjected to antisemitism from his schoolmates.[7] [8]
Young Eisner was tall and of sturdy build, but lacked athletic skills.
Eisner's mother frequently berated his father for not providing the family a better income, as he went from one job to another. Without success he also tried his hand at such ventures as a furniture retailer and a coat factory.[11] The family situation was especially dire following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that marked the beginning of the Great Depression.[12] In 1930, the situation was so desperate that Eisner's mother demanded that he, at thirteen, find some way to contribute to the family's income. He entered working life selling newspapers on street corners, a competitive job where the toughest boys fought for the best locations.[13]
Eisner attended
In 1936, high-school friend and fellow cartoonist
Eisner said that on one occasion a man whom Eisner described as "a mob type straight out of Damon Runyon, complete with pinkie ring, broken nose, black shirt, and white tie, who claimed to have "exclusive distribution rights for all Brooklyn" asked Eisner to draw Tijuana bibles for $3 a page. Eisner said that he declined the offer; he described the decision as "one of the most difficult moral decisions of my life".[15]
1936–1941: Comics industry and The Spirit
Eisner & Iger
Wow lasted four issues (cover-dated July–September and November 1936). After it ended, Eisner and Iger worked together producing and selling original comics material, anticipating that the well of available reprints would soon run dry, though their accounts of how their partnership was founded differ. One of the first such comic-book "packagers", their partnership was an immediate success, and the two soon had a stable of comics creators supplying work to
Among the studio's products was a self-syndicated Sunday comic strip, Hawks of the Sea, that initially reprinted Eisner's old strip Wow, What A Magazine! feature "The Flame" and then continued it with new material.[18] Eisner's original work even crossed the Atlantic, with Eisner drawing the new cover of the October 16, 1937, issue of Boardman Books' comic-strip reprint tabloid Okay Comics Weekly.[19]
In 1939, Eisner was commissioned to create
The Spirit
In "late '39, just before Christmas time," Eisner recalled in 1979,
"Busy" invited me up for lunch one day and introduced me to Henry Martin [sales manager of The Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, who] said, "The newspapers in this country, particularly the Sunday papers, are looking to compete with comics books, and they would like to get a comic-book insert into the newspapers." ... Martin asked if I could do it. ... It meant that I'd have to leave Eisner & Iger [which] was making money; we were very profitable at that time and things were going very well. A hard decision. Anyway, I agreed to do the Sunday comic book and we started discussing the deal [which] was that we'd be partners in the 'Comic Book Section,' as they called it at that time. And also, I would produce two other magazines in partnership with Arnold.
Eisner negotiated an agreement with the syndicate in which Arnold would copyright The Spirit, but "[w]ritten down in the contract I had with 'Busy' Arnold —and this contract exists today as the basis for my copyright ownership—Arnold agreed that it was my property. They agreed that if we had a split-up in any way, the property would revert to me on that day that happened. My attorney went to 'Busy' Arnold and his family, and they all signed a release agreeing that they would not pursue the question of ownership".[24] This would include the eventual backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck".
Selling his share of their firm to Iger, who would continue to package comics as the S.M. Iger Studio and as Phoenix Features through 1955, for $20,000,[25] Eisner left to create The Spirit. "They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"[26]
The Spirit, an initially eight- and later seven-page urban-crimefighter series, ran with the initial backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies.[27] It premiered June 2, 1940, and continued through 1952.[28] Eisner has cited the Spirit story "Gerhard Shnobble" as a particular favorite, as it was one of his first attempts at injecting his personal point of view into the series.[29]
1942–1970s: Military publications, The Spirit, and new endeavors
World War II and Joe Dope
Eisner was
En route to Washington, D.C., he stopped at the
Eisner then created the educational comic strip and titular character Joe Dope for Army Motors, and spent four years working in The Pentagon editing the ordnance magazine Firepower and doing "all the general illustrations – that is, cartoons" for Army Motors. He continued to work on that and its 1950 successor magazine, PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, until 1971.[32] Eisner also illustrated an official Army pamphlet in 1968 and 1969 called The M16A1 Rifle specifically for troops in Vietnam to help minimize the M16 rifle's notorious early reliability problems with proper maintenance. Eisner's style helped to popularize these officially-distributed works in order to better educate soldiers on equipment maintenance.[33][34]
While Eisner's later graphic novels were entirely his own work, he had a studio working under his supervision on The Spirit. In particular, letterer Abe Kanegson came up with the distinctive lettering style which Eisner himself would later imitate in his book-length works, and Kanegson would often rewrite Eisner's dialogue.[35]
Eisner's most trusted assistant on The Spirit, however, was Jules Feiffer, later a renowned cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter in his own right. Eisner later said of their memories of their working methods on the feature, "You should hear me and Jules Feiffer going at it in a room. 'No, you designed the splash page for this one, then you wrote the ending – I came up with the idea for the story, and you did it up to this point, then I did the next page and this sequence here and...' And I'll be swearing up and down that 'he' wrote the ending on that one. We never agree."[35]
So trusted were Eisner's assistants that Eisner allowed them to "ghost" The Spirit from the time that he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 until his return to civilian life in 1945. The primary wartime artists were the uncredited
Post-war comics
On Eisner's return from service and resumption of his role in the studio, he created the bulk of the Spirit stories on which his reputation was solidified. The post-war years also saw him attempt to launch the comic-strip/comic-book series Baseball, John Law, Kewpies, and Nubbin the Shoeshine Boy; none succeeded, but some material was recycled into The Spirit.[36]
The Spirit ceased publishing in 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, various publishers reprinted the adventures, often with covers by Eisner and with a few new stories from him.
American Visuals Corporation
During his World War II military service, Eisner had introduced the use of comics for training personnel in the publication Army Motors, for which he created the cautionary bumbling soldier Joe Dope, who illustrated various methods of
One of his longest-running jobs was
Other clients of his Connecticut-based company included
1970s–2005: Godfather of the graphic novel
Graphic novels
Eisner credited the 1971 Comic Art Convention (CAC) for his return to comics. In a 1983 interview with CAC organizer Phil Seuling, he said, "I came back into the field because of you. I remember you calling me in New London, where I was sitting there as chairman of the board of Croft Publishing Co. My secretary said, 'There's a Mr. Seuling on the phone and he's talking about a comics convention. What is that?' She said, 'I didn't know you were a cartoonist, Mr. Eisner.' 'Oh, yes,' I said, 'secretly; I'm a closet cartoonist.' I came down and was stunned at the existence of the whole world. ... That was a world that I had left, and I found it very exciting, very stimulating".[38]
Eisner later elaborated about meeting
I went down to the convention, which was being held in one of the hotels in New York, and there was a group of guys with long hair and scraggly beards, who had been turning out what spun as literature, really popular 'gutter' literature if you will, but pure literature. And they were taking on illegal [sic] subject matter that no comics had ever dealt with before. ... I came away from that recognizing that a revolution had occurred then, a turning point in the history of this medium. ... I reasoned that the 13-year-old kids that I'd been writing to back in the 1940s were no longer 13-year-old kids, they were now 30, 40 years old. They would want something more than two heroes, two supermen, crashing against each other. I began working on a book that dealt with a subject that I felt had never been tried by comics before, and that was man's relationship with God. That was the book A Contract with God....[39]
In the late 1970s, Eisner turned his attention to longer storytelling forms.
Some of his last work was the retelling in
His last graphic novel,
In 2008, Will Eisner's The Spirit: A Pop-Up Graphic Novel was published, with Bruce Foster as paper engineer.[41]
Teaching
In his later years especially, Eisner was a frequent lecturer about the craft and uses of sequential art. He taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he published Will Eisner's Gallery, a collection of work by his students[42] and wrote two books based on these lectures, Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which are widely used by students of cartooning. In 2002, Eisner participated in the Will Eisner Symposium of the 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels.[43]
Death
Eisner died January 3, 2005, in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, of complications from a quadruple bypass surgery performed December 22, 2004.[44][45] DC Comics held a memorial service in Manhattan's Lower East Side, a neighborhood Eisner often visited in his work, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk Street.[46]
Eisner was survived by his wife, Ann Weingarten Eisner, and their son, John.[47][48][49] In the introduction to the 2001 reissue of A Contract with God, Eisner revealed that the inspiration for the title story grew out of the 1970 death of his leukemia-stricken teenaged daughter, Alice, next to whom he is buried. Until then, only Eisner's closest friends were aware of his daughter's life and death.
Awards and honors
Eisner has been recognized for his work with the
He was inducted into the
Comics by Will Eisner are archived in the James Branch Cabell Library of
On the 94th anniversary of Eisner's birth, in 2011, Google used an image featuring the Spirit as its logo.[55][56]
With
Original books
- Odd Facts. Tempo Star Books. 1975. ISBN 0-441-60918-X.
- ISBN 0-89437-035-9.
- DC Comics reissue ISBN 1-56389-674-5
- DC Comics reissue
- Eisner, Will (1983). ISBN 0-87816-370-0.
- Eisner, Will (1985). ISBN 0-9614728-0-4.
- Eisner, Will (1986). New York: The Big City (softcover ed.). Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-020-5.
- Hardcover reprint 2000 ISBN 1-56389-682-6
- Hardcover reprint 2000
- Eisner, Will (1986). ISBN 1-56389-678-8.
- Eisner, Will (1987). The Building. Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-024-8.
- Eisner, Will (1988). ISBN 0-87816-038-8.
- Art of Will Eisner (2nd ed.). Kitchen Sink. 1989. ISBN 0-87816-076-0.
- Eisner, Will (1991). ISBN 1-56389-679-6.
- Eisner, Will (1991). The Will Eisner Reader. Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-129-5.
- Eisner, Will (1993). Invisible People. Kitchen Sink Press. ISBN 0-87816-208-9.
- Eisner, Will (1995). ISBN 0-87816-348-4.
- Will Eisner Sketchbook (softcover ed.). Kitchen Sink. 1995. ISBN 0-87816-399-9.
- Hardcover edition ISBN 0-87816-400-6
- Hardcover edition
- Eisner, Will (1996). ISBN 0-9614728-3-9.
- Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1996). The Princess and the Frog. ISBN 1-56163-244-9.
- Eisner, Will (1998). ISBN 0-87816-621-1.
- Eisner, Will (2000). Last Day in Vietnam. Dark Horse Comics. ISBN 1-56971-500-9.
- Eisner, Will; Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes (2000). The Last Knight. ISBN 1-56163-251-1.
- Eisner, Will (2000). Minor Miracles. DC Comics. ISBN 1-56389-751-2.
- Will Eisner's Shop Talk. Dark Horse Comics. 2001. ISBN 1-56971-536-X.
- Eisner, Will (2002). The Name of the Game. DC Comics. ISBN 1-56389-865-9.
- Eisner, Will (2003). ISBN 0-385-51009-8.
- The Name of the Game. DC Comics. 2003. ISBN 1-56389-869-1.
- Will Eisner's John Law: Dead Man Walking (softcover ed.). IDW. 2004. ISBN 1-932382-27-5.
- Hardcover edition ISBN 1-932382-83-6
- Hardcover edition
- ISBN 0-393-06045-4.
References
- ^ As co-creator of Doll Man.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, p. 2.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, pp. 2–3.
- ^ a b Schumacher 2010, p. 3.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, pp. 3–4.
- ^ a b Schumacher 2010, p. 4.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, p. 6.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, pp. 7–8.
- ^ a b Schumacher 2010, p. 10.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, p. 5.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, p. 11.
- ^ Schumacher 2010, p. 12.
- ^ Lovece, Frank (1974). Maple Leaf Publications, Paul Kowtiuk (ed.). "Cons: New York 1974!". The Journal Summer Special. Essex, ON.
- ^ Spiegelman, Art. "Tijuana Bibles", Salon.com, August 19, 1997. p. 2 Archived June 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. WebCitation archive, main page and p. 2. Retrieved on February 24, 2009.
- ^ Mercer, Marilyn, "The Only Real Middle-Class Crimefighter", New York (Sunday supplement, New York Herald Tribune), January 9, 1966; reprinted Alter Ego No. 48, May 2005
- ^ Heintjes, Tom, The Spirit: The Origin Years #3 (Kitchen Sink Press, September 1992)
- ^ Hawks of the Sea at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on March 15, 2012.
- ISBN 978-1599672489.
- ISBN 978-1-59582-011-2, pp. 44–45
- ISBN 978-0-393-32808-0, p. 42
- ^ Quattro, Ken. "DC vs. Victor Fox: The Testimony of Will Eisner", The Comics Detective, July 1, 2010.
- ^ "Art & Commerce: An Oral Reminiscence by Will Eisner." Panels #1 (Summer 1979), pp. 5–21, quoted in Quattro, Ken (2003). "Rare Eisner: Making of a Genius". Comicartville Library. Archived from the original on December 18, 2003.
- ^ a b Will Eisner interview, Alter Ego No. 48 (May 2005), p. 10
- ISBN 978-0-393-32808-0
- ^ Will Eisner interview, Jack Kirby Collector #16 (June 1997)
- ^ Eisner, The Dreamer, "About the Author", p. 55
- ^ "GCD :: Series :: The Spirit".
- ^ "Eisner Wide Open". Hogan's Alley. Archived from the original on June 20, 2013. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ a b "Will Eisner Interview", The Comics Journal No. 46 (May 1979), p. 45. Interview conducted October 13 and 17, 1978
- ^ Eisner interview, The Comics Journal No. 46, p. 37
- ^ a b Eisner interview, The Comics Journal No. 46, pp. 45–46
- ISBN 9781616088644. Retrieved July 13, 2014.
- ^ Mertes, Micah (November 5, 2011). "UNL professor's new book explores the weird world of government comics". Lincoln Journal Star.
Will Eisner should be credited for using sequences of cartoon images to teach people how to do things, rather than merely as a way to dramatize a story or illustrate text. One of the last military projects he worked on dealt with the use and care of the problematic M16 rifle. The weapon was issued in the mid-'60s to great fanfare but soon developed a reputation for unreliability. Full of double entendres, Operation and Preventive Maintenance The M16A1 Rifle is a classic example of Eisner's incredible ability to combine effectively informational/instructional design with graphic design.
- ^ a b Sim, Dave, "My Dinner With Will & Other Stories," Following Cerebus No. 4 (May 2005)
- ^ Andelman, pp. 139-41.
- ^ a b Schumacher 2010.
- ^ Groth, Gary (May 2005). "Will Eisner: Chairman of the Board". The Comics Journal. No. 267. Archived from the original on March 20, 2011.
- ^ "Transcript, Will Eisner's keynote address, Will Eisner Symposium". The 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels.
- ^ Sim, Dave, "Advice & Consent: The Editing of Graphic Novels" (panel discussion with Eisner and Chester Brown) and Frank Miller interview, both Following Cerebus No. 5 (August 2005).
- ^ MacDonald, Heidi (October 20, 2008). "When the Gift is a Graphic Novel". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved December 18, 2016.
- OCLC 930648436.
- ^ Eisner, Will. "Keynote Address from the 2002 'Will Eisner Symposium'", ImageTexT, vol. 1, No. 1 (2004). University of Florida Department of English. Retrieved 2011-02-02. WebCitation archive.
- ^ "Gemstone Publishing: Industry News (January 7, 2005): "In Memoriam: Will Eisner"". Scoop.diamondgalleries.com. Archived from the original on April 18, 2005. Retrieved February 2, 2011.
- ^ "Will Eisner (1917–2005)" Archived August 21, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, SF&F Publishing News, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, January 4, 2005. Retrieved 2011-02-02 WebCitation archive.
- ^ ""DC Comics Celebrates Will Eisner", "Scoop" (column), Gemstone Publishing, Inc. / Diamond International Galleries, March 19, 2005. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
- ^ Gravett, Paul. "Obituary: Will Eisner: He pioneered American comic books, and established the graphic novel as a literary genre", The Guardian, January 8, 2005. WebCitation archive.
- ^ Boxer, Sarah. "Will Eisner, a Pioneer of Comic Books, Dies at 87", The New York Times, January 5, 2005.
- ^ Obituaries: Will Eisner, The Daily Telegraph, January 6, 2005.
- ^ "Division Awards Comic Books". National Cartoonists Society. 2013. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2013.
- ^ "Inkpot Award". December 6, 2012.
- ^ "2015 Hall of Fame Inductee: Will Eisner". Society of Illustrators. Archived from the original on May 6, 2017. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
- ^ "2017 News | Will Eisner Week". VCU Libraries. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
- ^ "The Eisner Awards: the Oscars of the Comics Industry · VCU Libraries Gallery". gallery.library.vcu.edu. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
- ^ Seifert, Mark. "Google Celebrates Will Eisner's 94th Birthday with the Spirit Google Logo", BleedingCool.com, March 6, 2011.
- ^ Archive of Google March 6, 2011, main page Archived April 11, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Exhibitions: Masters of American Comics". The Jewish Museum. Archived from the original on May 11, 2011. Retrieved August 10, 2010.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). . - ^ Kimmelman, Michael. "See You in the Funny Papers"(art review), The New York Times, October 13, 2006.
- ^ "Society of Illustrators |". www.societyillustrators.org. Archived from the original on July 25, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
- ^ Brown, Tracy (April 27, 2018). "'My Favorite Thing Is Monsters' and 'Monstress' lead 2018 Eisner Awards nominations". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
Works cited
- Schumacher, Michael (2010). Will Eisner: A Dreamer's Life in Comics. ISBN 978-1-60819-524-4.
Further reading
- Feiffer, Jules, The Great Comic-Book Heroes, ISBN 1-56097-501-6.
- Jones, Gerard, Men of Tomorrow ISBN 0-434-01402-8.
- Steranko, Jim, The Steranko History of Comics 2 (Supergraphics, 1972).
- The Spirit at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on August 8, 2017.
- Fitzgerald, Paul E. "Every Picture Tells A Story: His Pen and Wit Sharper Than Ever, Graphic Novelist Will Eisner Takes On Religious Intolerance", The Washington Post, June 3, 2004. Archived October 20, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
- Robinson, Tasha. "Interview: Will Eisner", The A.V. Club / The Onion, September 27, 2000. WebCitation archive.
- Jacks, Brian. "Veterans Day Exclusive: 'The Spirit' Creator Will Eisner's Wartime Memories", MTV.com, November 11, 2000. Archived July 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
- Benton, John (May 2005). "Will Eisner: Having Something to Say". The Comics Journal (267). Archived from the original on March 18, 2011. Archive of material trimmed from print-magazine interview at the Wayback Machine (archived April 29, 2008). Interview conducted September 10, 1968; originally published in Witzend No. 6 (Spring 1969).
- "Interview with Jerry Iger" Archived October 1, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Cubic Zirconia Reader, 1985. WebCitation archive
- Vaughn, Susan (January 7, 2001). "Making It: A Pioneering Spirit in Pen and Ink – Graphic Novel's Father Has Been Innovator in Comics Since the '30s". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on October 7, 2016. Retrieved October 7, 2016.
External links
- WillEisner.com (archived 2011-03-19) at WebCite (webcitation.org)
- Will Eisner at Curlie
- Will Eisner at IMDb
- Will Eisner at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
- Will Eisner at Library of Congress, with 98 library catalog records
- The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Will Eisner Collection Guide (primary source material)
- Villain Paper "Fiction House The Spirit" Archived November 19, 2016, at the Wayback Machine