Dampened "Spirit"...

The sad news today that comics legend Will Eisner has died at age 87 only adds to the damp around the edges, forlorn weather we're having here in normally sunny San Diego. If ever there was a man who personified innovation in storytelling in comics, it was Eisner. Born in 1917, Will was a child prodigy artist who started in the biz in the mid-30s, and helped pioneer the then-prevalent studio system. His best personal (i.e., non-Spirit) work to me is The Dreamer, which tells the story of a young cartoonist making his way in the comics world of the late Depression-era.

Eisner was one of those rare writer/artists who knew how to make a business deal, too, and after selling the Eisner-Iger Studio to partner Jerry Iger, he pioneered an ownership deal with his weekly comics supplement The Spirit. It appeared in Sunday newspapers around the country. An 8-page Spirit feature led off, written and drawn by Eisner (for the most part, except his years in the service during WWII) and other features included Lady Luck and Mr. Mystic. The Spirit was reprinted in comic book form by Quality Comics. After the war, Eisner returned with a vengeance, and his best work is from 1946 or so until the end of the feature in the early 50s, when Wally Wood helped out with "The Spirit in Outer Space" stories. Eisner went on to a great career with the Armed Forces, producing P.S. Magazine, devoted to preventative maintenance. But The Spirit refused to die. Fondly remembered by fans, Eisner brought the character back for two 25-cent issues for Harvey Comics in the mid-60s, at the height of the Batman/superhero craze. Next came 2 "underground comics" put out by Kitchen Sink. Warren Publications followed for 16 or so magazine-sized issues, reprinting The Spirit in glorious black and white with color covers. The magazine then moved back to Kitchen Sink Press, where it appeared in both mag and comic book form, and Will also started Will Eisner Quarterly. Denis Kitchen would go on to become Eisner's long-time agent and business partner. The Spirit came roaring back to life once again, this time through DC Comics, which made the long-term committment to publish the ENTIRE Spirit collection in high quality hardbound editions. Volume 15 just made it's way to bookstores, and the current books highlight Eisner's best work on the series.

What separated The Spirit from every other comic character was Eisner's incredible sense of story. Memorable villains and supporting characters, an incredible sense of mood on the page, and of course, those ground-breaking splash pages and title treatments all added up to the definitive movie on paper. The amazing thing about it is, Eisner did it EACH AND EVERY WEEK for years.

In 1978, Eisner restarted his comics career with the ground-breaking graphic novel A Contract With God. There's some debate as to whether or not this is the first graphic novel, but no debate on the fact that Will was the first person to use that term in reference to his own work. Eisner continued his work in comics with many more graphic novels, all the way up to the end of his life. His latest, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, will be published by Norton in the Fall of this year. In addition to that, there's one more Eisner book to look forward to: Charles Brownstein's long interview/discussion between Eisner and Frank Miller, due out from Dark Horse this Spring. And even Wizard Magazine, who sometimes has a hard time admitting there were comics before 1985, recognized Eisner as "the most influential comics artist of all time."

Eisner was an amazing man in many ways and through my job at Comic-Con, I was happy to be able to say I knew him, if only a little. He was always pretty much up for anything, programming-wise, and he had so much joy and love of the medium that it was always infectious. Seeing him congratulate each and every Eisner Award recipient each year, you knew that he meant it, and you also knew how much that meant to everyone coming up to receive an award. Often times I overheard "and Will Eisner shook my hand--that was the icing on the cake," or words to that effect, and it was de rigeur to get the back of the plaque version of the award signed by Will. I had a nice talk with him at one Comic-Con when I escorted him to a panel and we chatted about the then-new editions of The Spirit Archives. He was absolutely thrilled at this quality repackaging of his work and was stunned at how great they looked.

From my own personal standpoint, I remember reading about him in Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes in 1965. That was my first exposure to him. (Incidentially, Feiffer was a former assistant of Eisner's.) My 10-year old brain couldn't quite grasp Eisner and The Spirit at that point, so I was less than impressed. But a year or so later, I remember coming across one of those beautiful, thick Harvey Giants at a Boardwalk newsstand in Atlantic City and being absolutely thrilled at the chance to read something new and different. I remembered him from that lofty "real book" by Feiffer, but to see his signature hero, here on muddy newsprint, in a much-less expensive format, really brought The Spirit out of the musty past and into the four-color present for me. I've gotten each and every one of The Spirit Archives and look forward to the rest of the run, but somehow without Will around, they seem a bit less enjoyable.