Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel

By Paul Levitz and Brad Meltzer

A celebration of the life of the acclaimed comic book storyteller through his work as well as interviews with fellow creators.

Will Eisner (1917–2005) is universally considered the master of comics storytelling, best known for The Spirit, his iconic newspaper comic strip, and A Contract With God, the first significant graphic novel. This seminal work from 1978 ushered in a new era of personal stories in comics form that touched every adult topic from mortality to religion and sexuality, forever changing the way writers and artists approached comics storytelling. Noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by showcasing his most famous work alongside unpublished and rare materials from the family archives. Also included are original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith, Denis Kitchen, and Neil Gaiman—all of whom knew Eisner and were inspired by his work to create their own graphic novels for a new generation of readers.

NOTE: The cover is a high-quality photographic reproduction of Eisner's original art. The design intentionally reveals tape and other stray markings that are part of the artist's process and reflect the age of the artifact that was photographed.

“Eisner was not only ahead of his times; the present times are still catching up to him,” —John Updike

“What Will did was and is timeless,” —Neil Gaiman

“Will Eisner is, and remains, one of my precious idols,” —Frank Miller

"He was the greatest,” —Harvey Kurtzman

“Will Eisner is a national treasure,” —Jules Feiffer

“Will Eisner is the heart and mind of American comics,” —Scott McCloud

“Eisner is the single person most responsible for giving comics its brains,” —Alan Moore

“Eisner was unique in feeling from the start that comic books were not necessarily this despised, bastard, crappy, lowbrow kind of art form, and that there was a potential for real art,” —Michael Chabon

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781613128640

Book preview

Detail, original art for the front cover of New York: The Big City, Kitchen Sink Press, 1986.

Detail, splash page from Self Portrait, The Spirit no. 101, May 3, 1942.

Above and this page: Will Eisner in his studio in Tamarac, Florida, May 2001, photographed by Greg Preston for his book, The Artist Within: Portraits of Cartoonists, Comic Book Artists, Animators, and Others, Dark Horse Books, 2007.

Detail, original art for the cover of A Contract With God, Kitchen Sink Press, 1985.

Detail, A Contract With God, 1978.

FOR ME, THIS IS A NEW PATH IN THE FOREST.

—WILL EISNER, preface to A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories

Detail, original art for an interior page of New York: The Big City, 1986.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BY BRAD MELTZER

PREFACE

BY PAUL LEVITZ

CHAPTER ONE

OVERTURE

CHAPTER TWO

THE SPIRIT RISING

CHAPTER THREE

THE SPIRIT UNBOUND

CHAPTER FOUR

STORYTELLING BUSINESS

CHAPTER FIVE

RECONNECTING

CHAPTER SIX

TEACH THE WORLD

CHAPTER SEVEN

GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE COMING!

CHAPTER EIGHT

AN INSPIRING CONTRACT

CHAPTER NINE

CENTER STAGE

CHAPTER TEN

CURTAIN CALL

APPENDIX

WILL EISNER AND THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: THE 2013 SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON PANEL

FURTHER READING

A WILL EISNER BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE WILL EISNER COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AWARDS BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM, 1988–2014

INDEX

Spot art from Eisner’s preface to A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, Baronet Press, 1978.

INTRODUCTION

IT’S ONE OF MY GREATEST professional regrets. It was a local event. It wasn’t far from my house. And here was the offer: They wanted me to come give a talk with a man named Will Eisner.

There it was: One time only. Me and Will Eisner. Together onstage (or at least together at a local library).

I passed.

Don’t look at me like that. I promise I had a good reason (though for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was). A conflicting event? A Little League game for my son? The more time passes, the more elaborate my excuse blooms in my memory. These days, I think I was helping rescue starving orphans from a flaming blimp that was about to Hindenburg in downtown Miami.

The point is, I didn’t do the event with Eisner. Whatever was going on, I figured I’d have another chance. Soon after, in January 2005, Will Eisner died. I found out he lived less than a half hour from me.

I know. You don’t have to say it. Read the first sentence again: It’s one of my greatest professional regrets. I mean it. It haunts me. Regularly. And yes, that story is all about me. But it’s also all about the legacy of Will Eisner.

To this day, the reason my regret guts me so deeply is because I was well aware of Eisner’s place in comic book history. In many ways, the two can’t be separated. As you’ll see, Eisner wasn’t just a participant in that history. He was a builder, a finely trained mason laying the cornerstones that became our industry’s foundation.

To the general public, he’s famous for giving us the term graphic novel. Let me just say it: To me, that’s not Eisner’s legacy. These days, the term itself is more often co-opted and used to put so-called serious work up on a cultural pedestal, while ghettoizing the more mainstream comic book and super hero portion of our industry. There’s nothing gained by snobbishly ignoring one’s own culture, and I truly believe Will Eisner would never stand for that. Don’t forget, this is the man who would proudly sit onstage as the Eisner Awards were given out in his name. And during the first year of those awards, the big winners weren’t just Watchmen or the folks who pride themselves on their New Yorker covers. They were Steve Rude’s Nexus, a Gumby comic, and even a Space Ghost one. Eisner stood—and still stands—for it all.

In my eyes, Eisner’s legacy wasn’t that he was one of the first to create serious comics. It’s that he was one of the first to show the world that comics should be taken seriously.

Indeed, throughout his life, he became the ambassador of exactly that. He was the one we would hold up, pointing with pride at books such as A Contract with God, praying for the one thing that had evaded comics for so long: credibility. I still remember reading A Contract with God all those years ago. I grew up in a crappy apartment building in Brooklyn. Eisner’s was in the Bronx. In my far-too-egotistical young eyes, that made us generational brethren. And then as I began to read, well … in those pages, and in so many more, I saw his ability to—Actually, I’ll let this book do its job and show you what Eisner really built.

Thanks to Paul Levitz, we now have a truly definitive overview of Eisner’s forceful and instrumental work. So as you turn the pages and things look familiar, just remember, Eisner’s the one who did it first. All I can say is, his commitment to the craft is the reason I get to sit here today. His work influenced me and influenced nearly every comic book creator I draw influence from.

As for my Will Eisner meeting, I learned my lesson. A few years later, I did a treasured event with artist Jerry Robinson (creator of the Joker and Robin, the Boy Wonder); got to know Joanne Siegel (widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel); and have picked the brains of Stan Lee and so many other of my heroes, including the author of this book.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, one of the comic book stores I used to go to (I found out years later) had an employee named Dan DiDio (currently the co-publisher of DC Comics). When Dan was younger, he used to go to a comics store that had an employee named Paul Levitz (the former president and publisher of DC Comics). Sometimes we have no idea just how intertwined our histories can be.

Here’s the proof: Decades later, it was Paul Levitz who okayed a storyline I wrote for DiDio that eventually led to my winning … what else? The Will Eisner Award (Best Single Issue 2008—Justice League of America no. 11).

To this day, it’s the only award I keep on display. It means everything to me. Not for the win. But for who it represents and the gifts he gave us.

—BRAD MELTZER

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

October 2014

Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Inner Circle, The Book of Fate, and seven other bestselling thrillers. He is one of a handful of authors to have books on multiple bestseller lists: nonfiction (History Decoded), advice (Heroes for My Son and Heroes for My Daughter), children’s books (I Am Amelia Earhart and I Am Abraham Lincoln), and even graphic novels (Identity Crisis and Justice League of America). He is also the host of the History Channel television show Decoded, as well as Lost History. You can find him at BradMeltzer.com and @bradmeltzer.

Original art for the back cover of A Contract with God, Kitchen Sink Press, 1985.

Original art for the cover of The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, 1974.

PREFACE

IF THERE’S A FORM revolutionizing popular culture today, it’s comics—and in particular, comics in the form of the graphic novel. Providing the cutting edge for success in movies, on television, in print—as textbooks, e-books, and online—and even invading such avant-garde spaces as the theater, comics and graphic novels are rewriting the rules for creativity. Disdained a generation ago as entertainment for illiterate children and future juvenile delinquents, comics have captured our imagination and earned the respect of critics and academics the world over. But a little more than seventy years ago, one cartoonist—and only one—said that comics were new and raw in form just now, but material for limitless intelligent development. And eventually and inevitably it will be a legitimate medium for the best of writers and artists. His name was Will Eisner, and more than any other single creator in his field, he made the legitimacy of comics happen.

As a writer, artist, entrepreneur, educator, and businessman, Eisner made crucial contributions to the medium he loved over a seventy-year period, and his influence has continued to shape the field in the years since his death in 2005. The range of his roles was pivotal to his influence: Eisner’s artistic peers were notoriously poor at managing their business activities and primarily served as cautionary tales in how not to be well rewarded for creative triumphs. Perhaps that multidimensional talent came at a price for Eisner. The two cartoonists most frequently regarded as his peers had a wider direct influence as artists on popular culture: Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD helped define the humor of America and usher in an era of sharp skepticism; and Jack Kirby’s dynamic artwork has shaped the visual sensibilities of films, television, and video games far beyond the literal adaptations of the super heroes he co-created for Marvel Comics. But of the founding generation, it was Eisner who, in the English-speaking world, most shaped comics into a recognized art form.

Will Eisner’s life has been well documented, not least by Eisner himself. Directly in his graphic novel The Dreamer, and indirectly in his other tales, he told a version of his youth in the early days of comics, and of life in the tenements of New York City. The interviews he gave have been published extensively, and even more unusually, the interviews he conducted with other cartoonists are in print to illuminate their commonalities and differences (including a book-length discussion with Frank Miller, revealing agreements and disagreements between top talents of two very separate generations). Eisner is the subject of many articles, two biographies, two documentaries, and innumerable scholarly papers. This book does not attempt to chronicle his personal life, or to provide a comprehensive look at the thousands of pages of artwork he created over seven decades. Much of his work is in print, and little of it can be described as unexamined. Eisner’s art speaks for itself. Its beauty, and the personalities that spring to life in it, quite literally tell their own tales. Besides the emblematic choices, the pieces included here are long unseen or were last published in collections when Eisner had barely begun the graphic novels that were the triumphant last act of his long and celebrated career.

Eisner is sometimes referred to as the father of the graphic novel, but it is fairer to see his life’s work as a quest to champion the respect and recognition of comics as a legitimate art form in America—a quest that was ultimately fulfilled through the creation of the graphic novel format. Though that journey took many turns, and Eisner’s approach was uniquely multifaceted, he lived to see his goal accomplished.

I lived through this journey with Eisner. First as a comics fan, interviewing him for an early fanzine. Then as a writer and editor for DC Comics, using skills often gleaned from his work. Finally as publisher of DC, having the opportunity to publish his work and become his friend. Our lives crossed in many ways. In interviewing Jules Feiffer for this book, I discovered how many friends we had in common from when we were each sixteen and breaking into comics, Jules at Eisner’s studio in the late 1940s, and me at DC Comics in the early 1970s. Jules knew Eisner and so many others early in their careers, while I knew them in their later days. Many of us came to share Eisner’s belief that comics were an art form; none of us shared his lifelong, dogged pursuit of making that belief a recognized fact.

Despite all the documentation and analysis, we still lack a solid, single-volume overview of the career and work of this innovative creator. There needs to be a book that places Eisner’s work in the context of its times and makes an argument for why he was of singular importance, particularly in the evolution of the graphic novel, which we can now safely consider one of the most creative and exciting contributions of pop culture. That is the task of this book. Exactly, I hope, as Will Eisner would have wanted.

—PAUL LEVITZ

New York City

August 2013

Detail, The Last Hero, unpublished Spirit story, 1996.

At the ‘Forgotten’ Ghetto, the Clinton News (DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx), December 8, 1933. Eisner’s first published cartoon, at age sixteen.

THE IMAGES THAT WILL EISNER spent a lifetime illuminating were burned into his eyes when he first opened them: the teeming life of immigrant New York City in the years between the two World Wars. While Eisner’s brush would sweep over alien landscapes, military battlefields, and even effete pursuits such as tennis, it would never seem as at home as when shading the crumbling wall of a tenement or capturing the shadowy folds of laundry dangling on a makeshift line and dripping onto the street below. Eisner became the cartoonist laureate of the Jewish immigrant experience, leaving those slums behind but taking their joys with him, seeing their many challenges through a lens that found the humor and optimism within. And despite the obstacles surrounding a young man coming of age in the heart of the Great Depression, Eisner told his stories to millions and ended up as the champion of an emerging creative form that would change popular culture. All quite unimaginable when he first opened his eyes.

Eisner’s father, Shmuel (or Sam, when Americanized), had been born in Kollmei near Vienna and moved to that city as an adolescent and apprenticed with a muralist. They painted frescoes in the wet plaster of churches or for prosperous homes of the Viennese. The Jews of Vienna were a largely assimilated minority, mostly working-class tradesmen and shopkeepers—generally a more comfortable group than those in the Russian Empire to the east. However relatively comfortable, Sam followed other family members to America in search of a better life. He settled in New York City, finding work painting scenery for vaudeville and the then-thriving Yiddish theater … and with an introduction from relatives, marrying a distant cousin named Fannie Ingber, who had the unusual start of being born on the ship bringing her mother over from Romania.

William Erwin Eisner, age one, 1918.

William Erwin Eisner came along on March 6, 1917, sharing his birthday with his father; his brother, Julian, arrived four years later; and a sister, Rhoda, eight years after that. The family, like so many immigrants of the time, lived on the tenuous edge of the city’s economy, moving from

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Essential reference for anyone serious about comics, art history, & graphic storytelling.