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Will Eisner: 1917-2005
It’s not that Will Eisner quite invented the American comic book the way that, say, Bill Monroe invented bluegrass. It’s that after it was invented, he just picked up the ball and kept running for more than five decades, seeing potential for art where few saw naught but junk. Eisner died Jan. 3 following quadruple bypass surgery. He was 87.
Very few mediums have enjoyed innovators with quite the impact that Will Eisner had on comics. He was a pioneer in the truest sense; his every panel had the potential to be ground-breaking because the forest was there for him to clear. From the medium’s formal aspects to the most abstract theories, Eisner was probably there first.
His newspaper strip “The Spirit” ran from 1940 to 1952. About a flagrantly un-superpowered, sometimes none-too-bright detective named Denny Colt who the public at large thought was dead, “The Spirit” was packaged as a comic-book shaped supplement in the Sunday paper.
Aimed at an older crowd than the “10-year-old cretins” that Eisner thought comics were aimed at, “The Spirit” locked in most of its tropes early, including the mighty unfortunate Ebony White, an African American character whose look has, to put it mildly, aged poorly, and could be upsetting to modern readers, in spite of the fact that White was often the most together character in the strip.
Then Eisner went off to war, drawing instruction manuals for the Pentagon. His “shop” — uncredited assistants — produced the strip in his absence. He was lucky to have some of the greats ghosting for him, and the strips that writers and draftsmen such as Jack Cole, William Wolkfolk and Lou Fine, are as good or better as any American comics being produced at the time.
Eisner’s talent blossomed after he returned from the war. From 1945 to 1952, “The Spirit” earned its reputation as the “Citizen Kane” of comics. Fourth-wall shattering narratives, wild panel design, confident, mature line work, both more “cartoony” and more sophisticated than it had been in the past. Every week, Eisner seemed to find a new way to make the page sing a smart, funny, ductile song. DC Comics, which has been collecting the complete run of “The Spirit” as a series of $50 hardcovers, has recently started on the post-war years. They. Are. Amazing. (One of the industry’s major awards is called the “Eisner,” and he handed them out every year.)
In 1978, Eisner published “A Contract with God,” which is generally (though arguably in some nerdy circles) considered to have invented the graphic novel. “Contract” drew upon a topics that Eisner would come back to again and again: the Jewish American experience and the early 20th century communities formed by urban tenement life. One of his most recent books was “Fagin the Jew,” a reimagining of the Charles Dickens character.
Bottom line: Everyone who draws comics, who reads comics, who loves comics pulp-opera or fine art owes Eisner. Period. We’d miss him, but his work is still dazzlingly alive.
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