Way back when – in the pre-internet days – I had sent some art samples to DC Comics the old-fashioned way: by mail. The responses were appropriate for someone fresh out of high school who hadn’t had any figure drawing classes. One of the letters (which I still have) had some advice for moving forward: “We recommend studying your favorite comics or movies and analyzing how the story has been told through pictures. Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art would be a great place to start. You should be able to find it at your local comics specialty store.”
At the time, my thought was, “Who the hell is Will Eisner?” After all, I had what I thought were the only books on comic art I would ever need: Stan Lee and John Buscema’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, Constructive Anatomy by George Bridgman, and the Hogarth/Burne Dynamic Figure Drawing books. (I still recommend these books for anyone starting a comics drawing career.) Nobody seemed to have Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art – not my local comics shop and certainly not at the bookstore Barnes & Noble.
When I finally found the book, I discovered that it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill “how to draw comics” book. In fact, there was very little about drawing in the book at all. Instead, it focused on what comics actually are: the combination of words and pictures to tell a narrative story. It had sections on text, imagery, timing, the frame (as a container, its language, the outline, and the emotion of it), the page as a meta panel, and expressive anatomy. The book was more about the theory and practice of creating a story than a step-by-step instruction.
The question had to be asked again: Who was Will Eisner?
Will Eisner (1917-2004) was one of the early creators of the comic book medium, and, more importantly, the person who not only saw the potential of what comics could be, but acted on that potential.
Will Eisner was a New York native, growing up in the Bronx and attending high school at Clinton-Dewitt, where other notable artists/ future comic book creators, such as Stan Lee and Bob Kane, had also attended. After graduating, he studied art under George Bridgman (who had also taught Norman Rockwell) at the Art Student League of New York and soon after began his professional career. Because of the Great Depression, Eisner had a hard time getting work.
Comic books in the mid 1930s had been reprints of newspaper comic strips, specifically Famous Funnies (1933). In 1935, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson began publishing New Fun Comics which was all-new material created specifically for the magazine. New Fun was the first comic book to be published by the company which later became DC Comics. Seeing a market, Eisner and manager/salesman Jerry Iger started an art “packaging” studio which produced stories on demand for various publishers. Eisner was the sole artist originally, but as the studio became busy, they had to expand. The Eisner/Iger shop soon employed many illustrators, including Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Lou Fine, George Tuska, Bernard Baily, and Bob Powell. While running the studio, Eisner began to understand that comics had the ability to be more than just superhero stories for kids.
In late 1939, the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate asked Eisner to create a comic book insert for their newspapers. Knowing that he would have a bigger audience which would include adults and that he would own the characters and work he did (a first for the era), Eisner sold his share of the studio to Iger and went to work for the Tribute Syndicate. He came up with the character of The Spirit, a detective “superhero” who had adventures which were less comic book-y and more O. Henry.
Will Eisner’s work on The Spirit is legendary. Despite a gap from 1942 to 1945 (during which Eisner was in the Army during World War II and others took over his duties on the strip), he was able to experiment with both story and art. He brought a mature and emotional sensibility to the writing, often focusing on side characters and situations as opposed to big hero battles. The art was where his stories truly separated themselves from traditional comics. Testing the boundaries with not only pacing and panel structure, Eisner created splash pages which incorporated the Spirit logo in design applications not seen before; sometimes, it was on a poster in the background, and, other times, the characters were running across it as if it was a building ledge.
Eisner later became inspired by the underground artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s and began incorporating their sensibilities into his work. Focusing on personal history and experiences, Eisner began creating his work as “graphic novels.” These tales ranged from anthologies of short stories, like A Contract with God, to longer tomes like To the Heart of the Storm. Within these, he continued to experiment with art and storytelling in groundbreaking ways.
Will Eisner’s work has inspired generations of comic creators. Among them, such notable creators like Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Scott McCloud was so interested in Eisner’s work and teachings that he expanded upon them with the fantastic Understanding Comics. This work itself inspired Will Eisner to expand on McCloud’s work with the follow-up to Comics and Sequential Art titled Graphic Storytelling.
This is Will Eisner Week during which his life and work are celebrated by hosting events in comic shops, schools, museums, and libraries, in an effort to promote sequential art, graphic novel literacy, free speech, and Eisner’s legacy. From the day I first found Comics and Sequential Art, I have been a Will Eisner fan.
