Will Eisner passes away at the age of 87
Doodles
Will Eisner was born March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, NY. The son of
Jewish immigrants, his early life and experiences growing up in New York
tenements would become the inspiration for much of his graphic novel
work. At De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Eisner's budding
interest in art was fostered, and it was in the school newspaper that
his first work was published.
Eisner's first comic work appeared 1936 in WOW What a Magazine! He
created two features for WOW—Harry Karry and The Flame. When the
magazine folded after only four issues, Eisner formed a partnership with
friend Jerry Iger, and the Eisner-Iger studio was born.
The studio was a veritable comics factory, churning out strips in a
variety of genres in the hopes of placing them with American newspapers.
Towards this end, Eisner-Iger recruited a number of young artists who
would go on to become comics' legends in their own right: Bob Kane, Lou
Fine, and Jack Kirby. The most enduring of Eisner's work to come out of
this period is Hawks of the Seas, the high-seas adventure strip that had
begun as The Flame.
The partnership ended in 1939 when Eisner joined the Quality Comics
Group to produce a syndicated 16-page newspaper supplement. It was for
this supplement that he created his most famous character, The Spirit.
Creating the Comic Book Section for Quality gave Eisner the
opportunity to reach a wide audience in papers across the country. The
supplement contained three four-color features developed by Eisner. The
lead feature, The Spirit , was a detective adventure script entirely
scripted and drawn by Eisner. This story of a masked detective who
protects Central City from the criminal element with no more than fists,
cunning, and an unbelievable tolerance for punishment quickly became the
most popular feature of the section. The supplement was renamed The
Spirit Section, and became Eisner's proving ground for some of the most
innovative work in the genre. Even in these early stories, the presence
of cinematic camera angles, atmospheric lighting effects and creative
storytelling techniques distinguished The Spirit.
Eisner's work on the Spirit was interrupted in 1942 when he was
drafted into the Army for service in World War II. The Army took
advantage of his skills as a cartoonist, and during the war he was
engaged in producing posters, illustrations and strips for the education
and entertainment of the troops.
After the War, Eisner returned to a much diminished Spirit, who had
faltered in less able hands during his absence. In December of 1945 he
reintroduced the strip with a retelling of the Spirit's origin, and the
Spirit was quickly back on track. Now with the support of other artists
such as a young Jules Feiffer and later Wally Wood, Eisner continued the
weekly installments of the Spirit until 1952. Never content to stay
within the narrow confines of the detective genre, Eisner used the
Spirit to explore a wide variety of stories, from simple tales of
ordinary people to wild flights of fancy verging on science fiction.
During this period, Eisner attempted to foster several other
projects for publication as newspaper strips or newsstand comics,
including Kewpies, Baseball, Nubbin the Shoeshine Boy and John Law. None
of these were successful, but some of the material created for them
ended up in The Spirit.
While still producing the Spirit, Eisner founded the American
Visuals Corporation, which was a commercial art company dedicated to
creating comics, cartoons, and illustrations for educational and
commercial purposes. Eisner resurrected Joe Dope, a bumbling soldier he
had created during the War, for feature in P*S Magazine, a publication
he produced for the Army. His other clients included RCA Records, an Oil
Filter company, the Baltimore Colts, and New York Telephone. This work
soon occupied most of Eisner's time, and The Spirit was abandoned in
favor of this more profitable work, which continued until the late 70s.
In the mid-60s several articles renewed popular interest in the
Spirit, and the strips were reprinted in a variety of forms that
continues to this day. Eisner was persuaded to create a small amount of
new Spirit material at this time, but despite a growing fan insistence
for more, Eisner did not have much taste for revisiting what he saw as
the heroic fantasies of his youth. Seeking for a more mature expression
of the comics' form, Eisner spent two years creating four short stories
of "sequential art" that became A Contract With God, first published by
Baronet Books in 1978. In this book, with its 1930s Bronx tenements and
slice of life moral tales, Eisner returned to his roots and discovered
new potential for the comics form—the graphic novel.
Eisner followed A Contract With God with a series of graphic novels
published by the alternative comics publisher Kitchen Sink Press. With
subject matter ranging from semi-autobiographical (The Dreamer and To
the Heart of the Storm), keen observations of modern life (The Building
and Invisible People) and science fiction parable (Life on Another
Planet ) Eisner helped to break comics from the juvenile ghetto of
superheroes and "funny books."
In addition to producing a continuing legacy of great work, Eisner
taught cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is the
author of two definitive works examining the creative process, Comics
and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling. Each year he presides over
the Eisner Awards, established in 1988, one of prestigious two comics
industry awards, presented each year at Comic-Con International in San
Diego. Recently, his work was gained wider recognition when it was
showcased in the Whitney Museum's 1996 "NYNY: City of Ambition" show.
Eisner has been cited as an inspiration by comics' creators from
all corners of the genre, and his influence is seen as widely. He
remains one of the most active, vital, and prolific forces in the
comics' field today.
Bob Andleman, author of the upcoming Eisner biography, Will Eisner:
A Spirited Life has written the following obituary via the Will Eisner:
A Spirited Life eNewsletter:
Legendary comics and graphic novel artist and writer Will Eisner
died last night, Monday, January 3, 2005, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
at the age of 87, following complications from quadruple heart bypass
surgery.
Will Eisner didn't create Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or even
Archie and Jughead. Some comic book fans may scratch their heads when
asked to describe his work. But every artist and writer in comic books,
as well as graphic artists across the entire spectrum of modern
illustration, television and film, owes a debt to him.
In 1941, Eisner created a goofball detective named Denny Colt who
died (not really) and was reborn as "The Spirit," the cemetery-dwelling
protector of the public - and pretty girls in particular. The Spirit
possessed no superpowers. He couldn ' t see through his girlfriend ' s
clothing the way a curious alien like the Man of Steel might
scientifically investigate Lois Lane. And he wasn't a brilliant
technologist like Batman, imagineering hokey gadgets and psychedelic
compounds for all-night parties with the Joker.
The Spirit broke so many molds:
- Eisner was the strip's artist and writer, a feat that is still
rare today.
- The Spirit was published and distributed as an insert in Sunday
newspapers, ala Parade magazine. It was seen weekly by as many as
5-million people from 1941 to 1952.
- No two Spirit sections looked alike. Although most commercial
operations - from Superman to Pepsi-Cola - spend millions of dollars
testing, proving and marketing their logos, Eisner thought it was more
challenging to change The Spirit's masthead every week - for 12 years.
- The Spirit was a fun, mature read, aimed at adults but accessible
to kids.
For all of these reasons, The Spirit was published and reissued in
various forms almost uninterrupted for 60 years. Its look, feel and
smartass humor is timeless, which accounts for the countless revivals.
Eisner, who went to high school with "Batman" creator Bob Kane,
provided first jobs in the comics business to everyone from Jack Kirby
(co-creator of " Captain America " and the " Fantastic Four " ) to
Pulitzer-winning writer and artist Jules Feiffer.
If not for Eisner ' s influence, Pulitzer Prize winner Art
Spiegelman might never have published his graphic novel Maus: A Survivor
' s Tale (Eisner is credited with popularizing - if not inventing - the
medium of the graphic novel with the 1978 publication of his graphic
story collection, A Contract With God) and fellow Pulitzer Prize-winner
Michael Chabon ' s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay would have
been missing quite a few Eisner-inspired tales.
For comic book professionals, the highest honor in the industry is
either an Eisner Award, named for Eisner and given out every summer at
Comic-Con International in San Diego, or a Harvey Award, named for
Eisner ' s late friend Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of Mad magazine and
Playboy ' s " Little Annie Fanny, " given every April in Pittsburgh.
Kurtzman, who discovered talents as diverse as R. Crumb and Gloria
Steinem, passed away in 1993, making Eisner the last man standing.
Literally.
At every Eisner Awards ceremony, each recipient was handed his or
her award by the man himself.
Several years ago, a big red velvet chair was put on stage for
Eisner. The Eisner Awards promoters said, " Come on, Will, you shouldn '
t have to stand up all this time; here, have a seat. " Eisner sat on it
briefly, got a laugh out of it, but then he stood up again, and stayed
on his feet the rest of the night. Eisner demonstrated his strength of
character and enduring physical wherewithal by standing on stage
throughout the entire presentation, shaking hands and personally
congratulating the winners. Because there is a different presenter for
each award, no one else stood for as long as Eisner.
That's why, when Eisner handed the 2002 Eisner Award for Best
Serialized Story (Amazing Spider-Man #30-35: " Coming Home " ) to writer
J. Michael Straczynski and artists John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna,
Straczynski thrust the award in the air and remarked, " You know, you
get the Emmy, you don ' t get it from ' Emmy. ' You win the Oscar, you
don ' t get it from ' Oscar. ' How freakin ' cool is this? "
Published in November 2004, DC Comics ' The Will Eisner Companion
is the first comprehensive, critical overview of the work of this
legendary writer/artist. Divided into two sections - his Spirit work and
his graphic novels - this authorized companion features all-new critical
and historical essays by noted comics historians N.C. Christopher Couch
and Stephen Weiner, as well as alphabetical indexes relating to all
aspects and characters in his oeuvre. Also includes a chronology, a
bibliography and suggested reading lists, as well as an introduction by
Dennis O'Neil.
A new generation of comics fans learned about the man in the 1970s
when underground comix publisher Denis Kitchen began reprinting " The
Spirit " stories and eventually produced new stories of the character by
top comic book talent including Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and Neil
Gaiman. Kitchen became one of Eisner ' s closest friends and confidants,
as well as his personal representative and literary agent (with Judith
Hansen).
More recently, " John Law, " a 56-year- old Will Eisner character,
was given fresh life and adventures in 2002 by Australian artist and
writer Gary Chaloner as an online comic book hero at ModernTales.com. In
December 2004, Law returned to print in IDW Publishing ' s " Will
Eisner's John Law " hardcover trade paperback. These stories were the
first original John Law adventures published since Eisner worked on the
character in 1948. This edition includes both new material and classic
John Law tales by Eisner himself.
And Eisner ' s final - and likely most controversial - graphic
novel, The Plot, finished last summer, will be published this spring by
W.W. Norton.
Will Eisner was the wizard behind the curtain, except in his case,
the magic was real.
There will be no funeral service, per Will ' s wishes. " Will and I
hated funerals, " his wife, Ann, said the morning after his death. " We
made plans long ago to avoid having them ourselves. " He will be buried
next to his late daughter, Alice, who died in 1969. Surviving Will are
his wife, Ann, and his son, John.
Cards may be sent to:
Will Eisner Studios
8333 W. McNab Road
Tamarac, FL 33321
Unidyne
In a furry-related note:
Will Eisner's "The Spirit" was the inspiration for Michael T. Gilbert's
parody/homage "The Wraith", an anthropomorphic re-working of the theme
that ran in "Quack" comics (published by Star*Reach). MU Press
published a collection of the Wraith pages ("The Complete Wraith") a few
years back.
http://www.angelfire.com/art/wildwood/wraith.html
Goddammnit, I will truly miss Eisner! His "Comics and Sequential Art"
should be read by every cartoonist!
Steven F. Scharff
---
In <cref4c$2iv1$1...@velox.critter.net> Doodles wrote:
> From http://www.willeisner.com/
>
> Will Eisner was born March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, NY. The son of
> Jewish immigrants, his early life and experiences growing up in New
> York tenements would become the inspiration for much of his graphic
> novel work. At De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Eisner's
> budding interest in art was fostered, and it was in the school
> newspaper that his first work was published.
>
> Eisner's first comic work appeared 1936 in WOW What a Magazine!
> He created two features for WOW?Harry Karry and The Flame. When the
> comics form?the graphic novel.
joestr...@hotmail.com
hope he gets some serious obits); who will be next artist to go?
Mike and Carole
self-effacing fellow.
I was helping Stan Sakai set up, it was his first time there, and our third.
I had set up our table, and watched his stuff while he brought in more.
A fan of Usagi came in and asked if I was Stan, since I was sitting behing
his table. I told him no, but that Stan would be back in a minute. He asked
if I would take his picture with Stan and I said sure. Just then Stan came
back and I introduced them.
While they talked, Will Eisner came up. We chatted for a minute or two, and
then we walked over to Stan. Stan got very excited that Eisner came to see
his table. The fan just kind of stood there, and then got ready to take a
picture of the two of them.
I told him to wait a minute. Then I asked Stan and Eisner if they'd mind
posing for a picture with a fan. So I took a picture of the three of them.
I wonder if that fan still has that very historic picture he never expected
to get that day?
----------------------------------------
ALL of us working in comic books owe Will Eisner a debt. He showed us you
COULD take your vision and publish it, on your terms.
Mike
Skyfire
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050104/ap_on_en_ot/obit_eisner
Farewell, Eisner. You're headed for a better world.
I respected him very much. I loved his books on comics, sequential
art, and storytelling. On top of that, Eisner really set the stage for
Scott McCloud to give comics the academic attention they deserve in his
groundbreaking book "Understanding Comics".
Caged_Horse
GRAPHIC NOVEL PIONEER DIES
America's "Leonardo of the Comic Book", the strip artist and graphic novel
pioneer Will Eisner, who gave his name to the genre's annual awards, has
died in Florida aged 87, after quadruple heart-bypass surgery.
(My note to newspaper editors: if nothing else, Eisner's work established
that strips, comics and graphic novels are NOT a genre, despite numerous
[and erroneous] references to them as such. Neither, for that matter, is
animation -- I can't believe how many film critics continue to think
otherwise. Here endeth the rant. RIP.)
Unidyne
I didn't really "meet" the man in person, but I did see him in the flesh.
A friend of mine was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York
City and invited me to see a screening of a documentary made by his
teacher ("Document of the Dead", a bio on George A. Romero by Roy
Frumkes).
While the film was being threaded in the projector, a chubby, white
haired man came into the room and asked the teacher a question. He
checked a clipboard, gave an answer of "Not yet", and the elder man gave
a deep sigh and left the room.
The teacher turned to me and, with an impish grim, said "That was Will
Eisner!"
I swear by all that is holy that if you had hit me with a brick then and
there, I would not have blinked.
Goodbye, Will. You've touched more lives than you could ever count.
Steven F. Scharff
- - -
joestr...@hotmail.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/05eisner.html?oref=login&8hpib
For those who don't want to register with the site:
Will Eisner, a Pioneer of Comic Books, Dies at 87
By SARAH BOXER
Published: January 5, 2005
Will Eisner, an innovative comic-book artist who created the Spirit, a
hero without superpowers, and the first modern graphic novel, "A
Contract With God," died on Monday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he
lived. He was 87.
His death came after quadruple bypass surgery, said Denis Kitchen, his
friend and publisher.
Comics fans call the Spirit "The Citizen Kane" of comics for its
innovation, its seriousness and its influence. The first installment
appeared in June 1940 as part of a syndicated comics section he had
begun producing a year earlier as an insert for Sunday papers. It
featured a detective, Denny Colt, who was killed off on the third page.
Or so it seemed.
It turned out that Colt wasn't exactly dead. He was reborn as a man in
a blue suit, a blue mask and blue gloves: the Spirit. As Bob Andelman,
the author of the forthcoming biography "Will Eisner: A Spirited Life,"
describes the comic hero, he was "the cemetery-dwelling protector of
the public and pretty girls in particular." What made him unique was
his lack of superpowers. He couldn't see through clothing, he couldn't
fly, and he wasn't even brilliant.
Wildwood, a Web site devoted to the Spirit, describes the hero as a man
"with no gimmicks or powers," other than "his freedom from society,"
and notes that Mr. Eisner himself called the Spirit a "middle-class
crimefighter."
Even in a world obsessed with the likes of Superman, the Spirit's
dearth of powers was no obstacle to success. According to DC Comics, at
its height the Spirit appeared in 20 newspapers, reaching 5 million
readers every Sunday.
In 1942, when Mr. Eisner was drafted into the Army and started drawing
comics for the military, other artists and writers sustained the comic
until he returned. In late 1945 Eisner went back to the Spirit and,
with the help of a number of artists, including Klaus Nordling and
Jules Feiffer, not only revived it but deepened it too. The Spirit
finally came to a close in 1952.
Mr. Eisner, who was born in New York on March 6, 1917, published his
first comic in 1936 in a publication called "Wow, What a Magazine!"
There he met Jerry Iger, and together they created a comic book outfit,
Eisner & Iger, that employed, among other artists, Bob Kane, the
creator of Batman, and Jack Kirby, one of the creators of the Fantastic
Four. Mr. Eisner also had the bad fortune of turning down a comic
called Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
With the conclusion of the Spirit, Mr. Eisner spent much of his time
for the next 25 years running the American Visual Corporation, a
producer of educational, Army and government comic books. This part of
his career is often given short shrift, but Mr. Kitchen, whose Kitchen
Sink Press reprinted all of the postwar Spirit comics from 1973 to
1998, said that Mr. Eisner's instructional comics made for the United
States Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War
were some of his greatest innovations.
Military manuals used to be "ugly and dry," Mr. Kitchen said. Mr.
Eisner changed all that. "He used words and pictures together to show
soldiers how to do everything from putting their lives back together
after war to cleaning their tanks."
In the 1970's Mr. Eisner was reborn as a comic artist. In 1978 he wrote
and drew "A Contract With God," a comic book story about Frimme Hersh,
a Jewish immigrant who becomes a slumlord in the Bronx when he
discovers that God has forsaken him. With that book, Mr. Eisner became
famous for his moody rain, which came to be called "Eisner spritz." His
work over the years was also noted for wordless, emotional close-ups on
characters' faces.
That book also paved the way for other graphic novelists. N. C.
Christopher Couch, one of the authors of "The Will Eisner Companion"
(DC Comics, 2004), noted that "Eisner independently coined the term
graphic novel in 1978." And to underscore that "A Contract With God"
was a novel and not a comic, he insisted on a trade publisher for it.
His seriousness helped bring mainstream attention to works like Art
Spiegelman's "Maus" and Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis." As Mr. Couch
put it: "He drew on everything from Theodore Dreiser to the Talmud. He
brought American literary naturalism to the comics. And he kept
publishing these books until everybody woke up and said, 'Wow, these
are books! This is an art form! We should take this seriously!' "
Art Spiegelman called Mr. Eisner, "a giant, a pioneer, a dynamo."
In an interview on www.powellsbooks.com, Michael Chabon noted that Joe,
one of the heroes of his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &
Clay," shares some features with Mr. Eisner. "Right from the beginning,
he saw comics as art. He didn't have any compunction about it. He
wasn't apologetic. He didn't have that 'yeah, sorry, I draw comics'
kind of attitude that almost every other artist at the time did."
Mr. Eisner wrote two books on comic art, "Comic and Sequential Art"
(1985) and "Graphic Storytelling" (1996). Recently, Dark Horse Press
published Mr. Eisner's "Last Day in Vietnam," a collection of the
military battle stories he wrote in Korea and Vietnam. In 2000, DC
Comics started publishing "The Spirit Archives," a multivolume edition
of the full run of the comic. And this spring W.W. Norton will release
Mr. Eisner's last work, a graphic history titled "The Plot: The Secret
Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Mr. Eisner is survived by his wife, Ann, and his son, John. He will be
buried next to his daughter, Alice, who died in 1969.
A mark of Mr. Eisner's influence is that one of the most prestigious
awards in the comics business, the Eisner, was named for him and was
presented by him. Mr. Eisner's biographer, Mr. Andelman, noted that
when Mr. Eisner handed out the award for best serialized story of 2002,
one of the recipients, the writer J. Michael Straczynski, "thrust the
award in the air and remarked: 'You know, you get the Emmy, you don't
get it from Emmy. You win the Oscar, you don't get it from Oscar. How
freakin' cool is this?' "
Chuck Melville
Unidyne wrote:
> I didn't really "meet" the man in person, but I did see him in the flesh.
> A friend of mine was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York
> City
I had that same good fortune, and was able to sit in on one of his
classes one afternoon.
I also want to note that as well as THE SPIRIT, which was his magnum
opus, Eisner also created or co-created SHEENA OF THE JUNGLE (the first
of the popular 'jungle girl' sub-genre series, and which was later made
into a TV show during the fifties) and BLACKHAWK, a series about aviator
adventurers which ran for some thirty years as a popular comic for,
first, QUALITY COMICS and, later, DC COMICS.
--
-Chuck Melville-
Comic book fanatic and sometimes-creator-type-person
***************
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