Will Eisner
Encyclopedia
William Erwin "Will" Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American
comics
writer
, artist
and entrepreneur
. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit
; for his use of comics as an instructional medium; for his leading role in establishing the graphic novel
as a form of literature with his book A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories
; and for his educational work about the medium as exemplified by his book Comics and Sequential Art
.
The comics community paid tribute to Eisner by creating the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
, more commonly known as "the Eisners", to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium. Eisner enthusiastically participated in the awards ceremony, congratulating each recipient. In 1987, with Carl Barks
and Jack Kirby
, he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Eisner was born in Brooklyn
, New York City
, the son of Jewish immigrants. His parents provided a modest life for their son. His mother was from Romania
and served as the more practical and realistic parent, firmly believing that her son’s artistic tendencies would never amount to any kind of success in life. His father, an artist, was born in Vienna
, Austria
. He painted backdrops for vaudeville
and the Jewish theater but was also a semi-successful entrepreneur and, at one point, a manufacturer in Manhattan
's Seventh Avenue
garment district. Believing his son should value creativity and art, the elder Eisners instilled in him a sense of duality, a balance between business and art. Eisner attended DeWitt Clinton High School
. With influences that included the early 20th-century commercial artist J. C. Leyendecker
, he drew for the school newspaper (The Clintonian), the literary magazine (The Magpie) and the yearbook
, and did stage design, leading him to consider doing that kind of work for theater. Upon graduation, he studied under Canadian artist George Brandt Bridgman (1864–1943) for a year at the Art Students League of New York
. Contacts made there led to a position as an advertising
writer-cartoonist
for the New York American newspaper. Eisner also drew $10-a-page illustrations for pulp magazines, including Western Sheriffs and Outlaws.
In 1936, high-school friend and fellow cartoonist Bob Kane
, of future Batman
fame, suggested that the 19-year-old Eisner try selling cartoons to the new comic book Wow, What A Magazine! "Comic books" at the time were tabloid-sized collections of comic strip
reprints in color. In 1935, they had begun to include occasional new comic strip-like material. Wow editor Jerry Iger
bought an Eisner adventure strip called Captain Scott Dalton, an H. Rider Haggard
-styled hero who traveled the world after rare artifacts. Eisner subsequently wrote and drew the pirate strip "The Flame" and the secret agent
strip "Harry Karry" for Wow as well.
Eisner said that on one occasion a man who Eisner described as "a Mob
type straight out of Damon Runyon
, complete with pinkie ring, broken nose, black shirt, and white tie, who claimed to have 'exclusive distribution rights for all Brooklyn
" asked Eisner to draw Tijuana bible
s for $3 a page. Eisner said that he declined the offer; he described the decision as "one of the most difficult moral decisions of my life."
, Quality Comics
(for whom Eisner co-created such characters as Doll Man
and Blackhawk
), and others.
Turning a profit of $1.50 a page, Eisner claimed that he "got very rich before I was 22," later detailing that in Depression-era
1939 alone, he and Iger "had split $25,000 between us", a considerable amount for the time. Eisner's original work even crossed the Atlantic, with Eisner drawing the new cover of the October 16, 1937 issue of Boardman Books
' comic-strip reprint tabloid Okay Comics Weekly.
In 1939, Eisner was commissioned to create Wonder Man
for Victor Fox, an accountant who had previously worked at DC Comics
and was becoming a comic book publisher himself. Following Fox's instructions to create a Superman
-type character, and using the pen name Willis, Eisner wrote and drew the first issue of Wonder Comics. Eisner said in interviews throughout his later life that he had protested the derivative nature of the character and story, and that when subpoenaed after National Periodical Publications, the company that would evolve into DC Comics
, sued Fox, alleging Wonder Man was an illegal copy of Superman, Eisner testified that this was so, undermining Fox's case; Eisner even depicts himself doing so in his semi-autobiographical graphic novel The Dreamer. However, a transcript of the proceeding, uncovered by comics historian Ken Quattro in 2010, indicates Eisner in fact supported Fox and claimed Wonder Man as an original Eisner creation.
In "late '39, just before Christmas
time," Eisner recalled in 1979, Quality Comics publisher Everett M. "Busy" Arnold "came to me and said that the Sunday newspapers were looking for a way of getting into this comic book boom," In a 2004 interview, he elaborated on that meeting:
Eisner negotiated an agreement with the syndicate in which Arnold would copyright The Spirit, but, "Written down in the contract I had with 'Busy' Arnold — and this contract exists today as the basis for my copyright ownership — Arnold agreed that it was my property. They agreed that if we had a split-up in any way, the property would revert to me on that day that happened. My attorney went to 'Busy' Arnold and his family, and they all signed a release agreeing that they would not pursue the question of ownership" This would include the eventual backup features "Mr. Mystic
" and "Lady Luck
".
Selling his share of their firm to Iger, who would continue to package comics as the S. M. Iger Studio and as Phoenix Features through 1955, for $20,000, Eisner left to create The Spirit. "They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"
The Spirit, an initially eight- and later seven-page urban-crimefighter series, ran with the initial backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies. It premiered June 2, 1940, and continued through 1952.
Eisner was drafted into the U.S. Army in "late '41, early '42" and then "had about another half-year which the government gave me to clean up my affairs before going off" to fight in World War II
. He was assigned to the camp newspaper in Aberdeen
, where "there was also a big training program there, so I got involved in the use of comics for training. ... I finally became a warrant officer, which involved taking a test — that way you didn't have to go through Officer Candidate School
." En route to Washington, D.C.
, he stopped at the Hollabird Depot in Baltimore, Maryland, where a mimeographed publication titled Army Motors was put together. "Together with the people there ... I helped develop its format. I began doing cartoons — and we began fashioning a magazine that had the ability to talk to the G.I.s in their language. So I began to use comics as a teaching tool, and when I got to Washington, they assigned me to the business of teaching — or selling — preventive maintenance." Eisner then created the educational comic strip and titular character Joe Dope for Army Motors, and spent four years working in The Pentagon
editing the ordnance magazine Firepower and doing "all the general illustrations — that is, cartoons" for Army Motors. He continued to work on that and its 1950 successor magazine, PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
.
While Eisner's later graphic novels were entirely his own work, he had a studio working under his supervision on The Spirit. In particular, letterer
Abe Kanegson came up with the distinctive lettering style which Eisner himself would later imitate in his book-length works, and Kanegson would often rewrite Eisner's dialogue.
Eisner's most trusted assistant on The Spirit, however, was Jules Feiffer
, later a renowned cartoonist, playwright
and screenwriter
in his own right. Eisner later said of their working methods "You should hear me and Jules Feiffer going at it in a room. 'No, you designed the splash page for this one, then you wrote the ending — I came up with the idea for the story, and you did it up to this point, then I did the next page and this sequence here and...' And I'll be swearing up and down that 'he' wrote the ending on that one. We never agree".
So trusted were Eisner's assistants that Eisner allowed them to "ghost" The Spirit from the time that he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 until his return to civilian life in 1945. The primary wartime artists were the uncredited Lou Fine
and Jack Cole
, with future Kid Colt, Outlaw
artist Jack Keller
drawing backgrounds. Ghost writers included Manly Wade Wellman
and William Woolfolk. The wartime ghosted stories have been reprinted in DC Comics
' hardcover collections The Spirit Archives Vols. 5 to 11 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942 - December 1944.
On Eisner's return from service and resumption of his role in the studio, he created the bulk of the Spirit stories on which his reputation was solidified. The post-war years also saw him attempt to launch the comic-strip/comic-book series Baseball, John Law, Kewpies, and Nubbin the Shoeshine Boy; none succeeded, but some material was recycled into The Spirit.
of various military equipment and weapons. In 1948, while continuing to do The Spirit and seeing television
and other post-war trends eat at the readership base of newspapers, he formed the American Visuals Corporation in order to produce instructional materials for the government, related agencies, and businesses. One of his longest-running jobs was PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
, a digest size
d magazine with comic book
elements that he started for the Army in 1951 and continued to work on until the 1970s with Klaus Nordling
, Mike Ploog
, and other artists.
Other clients of his Connecticut-based company included RCA Records
, the Baltimore Colts
NFL football
team, and New York Telephone
.
In the late 1970s, Eisner turned his attention to longer storytelling forms. A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories (Baronet Books, October 1978) is an early example of an American graphic novel, combining thematically linked short stories into a single square-bound volume. Eisner continued with a string of graphic novels that tell the history of New York
's immigrant communities, particularly Jews, including The Building, A Life Force, Dropsie Avenue and To the Heart of the Storm. He continued producing new books into his seventies and eighties, at an average rate of nearly one a year. Each of these books was done twice — once as a rough version to show editor Dave Schreiner, then as a second, finished version incorporating suggested changes.
Some of his last work was the retelling in sequential art of novel
s and myth
s, including Moby-Dick
. In 2002, at the age of 85, he published Sundiata
, based on the part-historical, part-mythical stories of a West Africa
n king, "The Lion of Mali
". Fagin the Jew
is an account of the life of Dickens' character Fagin, in which Eisner tries to get past the stereotyped portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist
. His last graphic novel, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , an account of the making of the anti-semitic hoax
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was completed shortly before his death and published in 2005 .
in New York City, where he published Will Eisner's Gallery, a collection of work by his students and wrote two books based on these lectures, Comics and Sequential Art
and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
, which are widely used by students of cartooning. In 2002, Eisner participated in the Will Eisner Symposium of the 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels.
, Florida
, of complications from a quadruple bypass surgery
performed December 22, 2004. DC Comics held a memorial service in Manhattan's Lower East Side
, a neighborhood Eisner often visited in his work, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation
on Norfolk Street.
Eisner was survived by his wife, Ann Weingarten Eisner, and their son, John. In the introduction to the 2001 reissue of A Contract with God, Eisner revealed that the inspiration for the title story grew out of the 1970 death of his leukemia
-stricken teenaged daughter, Alice, next to whom he is buried. Until then, only Eisner's closest friends were aware of his daughter's life and death.
Comic Book Award for 1967, 1968, 1969, 1987 and 1988, as well as its Story Comic Book Award in 1979, and its highest accolade, the Reuben Award, for 1988.
He was inducted into the Academy of Comic Book Arts
Hall of Fame in 1971, and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame
in 1987. The following year, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
were established in his honor.
He received in 1975 the second Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
.
With Jack Kirby
, Robert Crumb
, Harvey Kurtzman
, Gary Panter
, and Chris Ware
, Eisner was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum
in New York City
, New York
, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.
On the 94th anniversary of Eisner's birth, in 2011, Google
used an image featuring the Spirit as its logo.
....; .. (anthology collecting , and . (anthology collecting , , and . (anthology collecting , , and , along with the short stories and .
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit
The Spirit
The Spirit is a crime-fighting fictional character created by writer-artist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940 in "The Spirit Section", the colloquial name given to a 16-page Sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and reaching five million...
; for his use of comics as an instructional medium; for his leading role in establishing the graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
as a form of literature with his book A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories
A Contract with God
A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories is a graphic novel by Will Eisner that takes the form of several stories on a theme. Published by Baronet Books in October 1978 in simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback editions — the former limited to a signed-and-numbered print-run of 1,500 —...
; and for his educational work about the medium as exemplified by his book Comics and Sequential Art
Comics and Sequential Art
Comics and Sequential Art is a 1985 book by Will Eisner that provides an analytical overview of comics. It is based on a series of essays that appeared in The Spirit magazine, themselves based on Eisner's experience teaching a course in sequential art at the School of Visual Arts...
.
The comics community paid tribute to Eisner by creating the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
, more commonly known as "the Eisners", to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium. Eisner enthusiastically participated in the awards ceremony, congratulating each recipient. In 1987, with Carl Barks
Carl Barks
Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...
and Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
, he was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Early life and career
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, the son of Jewish immigrants. His parents provided a modest life for their son. His mother was from Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and served as the more practical and realistic parent, firmly believing that her son’s artistic tendencies would never amount to any kind of success in life. His father, an artist, was born in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
. He painted backdrops for vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and the Jewish theater but was also a semi-successful entrepreneur and, at one point, a manufacturer in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's Seventh Avenue
Seventh Avenue (Manhattan)
Seventh Avenue, known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park, is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is southbound below Central Park and a two-way street north of the park....
garment district. Believing his son should value creativity and art, the elder Eisners instilled in him a sense of duality, a balance between business and art. Eisner attended DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School is an American high school located in the Bronx, New York City, New York.-History:Clinton opened in 1897 at 60 West 13th Street at the northern end of Greenwich Village under the name of Boys High School, although this Boys High School was not related to the one in Brooklyn...
. With influences that included the early 20th-century commercial artist J. C. Leyendecker
J. C. Leyendecker
Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the pre-eminent American illustrators of the early 20th century. He is best known for his poster, book and advertising illustrations, the trade character known as The Arrow Collar Man, and his numerous covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Between 1896 and...
, he drew for the school newspaper (The Clintonian), the literary magazine (The Magpie) and the yearbook
Yearbook
A yearbook, also known as an annual, is a book to record, highlight, and commemorate the past year of a school or a book published annually. Virtually all American, Australian and Canadian high schools, most colleges and many elementary and middle schools publish yearbooks...
, and did stage design, leading him to consider doing that kind of work for theater. Upon graduation, he studied under Canadian artist George Brandt Bridgman (1864–1943) for a year at the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
. Contacts made there led to a position as an advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
writer-cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
for the New York American newspaper. Eisner also drew $10-a-page illustrations for pulp magazines, including Western Sheriffs and Outlaws.
In 1936, high-school friend and fellow cartoonist Bob Kane
Bob Kane
Bob Kane was an American comic book artist and writer, credited as the creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman...
, of future Batman
Batman
Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...
fame, suggested that the 19-year-old Eisner try selling cartoons to the new comic book Wow, What A Magazine! "Comic books" at the time were tabloid-sized collections of comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
reprints in color. In 1935, they had begun to include occasional new comic strip-like material. Wow editor Jerry Iger
Jerry Iger
Samuel Maxwell "Jerry" Iger was an American cartoonist. With business partner Will Eisner he co-founder of Eisner & Iger, a comic book packager that produced comics on demand for new publishers during the late-1930s and 1940s period known to fans and historians as the Golden Age of Comic...
bought an Eisner adventure strip called Captain Scott Dalton, an H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
-styled hero who traveled the world after rare artifacts. Eisner subsequently wrote and drew the pirate strip "The Flame" and the secret agent
Secret Agent
Secret Agent is a British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young...
strip "Harry Karry" for Wow as well.
Eisner said that on one occasion a man who Eisner described as "a Mob
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
type straight out of Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
, complete with pinkie ring, broken nose, black shirt, and white tie, who claimed to have 'exclusive distribution rights for all Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
" asked Eisner to draw Tijuana bible
Tijuana bible
Tijuana bibles were pornographic comic books produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era...
s for $3 a page. Eisner said that he declined the offer; he described the decision as "one of the most difficult moral decisions of my life."
Eisner & Iger
Wow lasted four issues (cover-dated July–September and November 1936). After it ended, Eisner and Iger worked together producing and selling original comics material, anticipating that the well of available reprints would soon run dry, though their accounts of how their partnership was founded differ. One of the first such comic-book "packagers", their partnership was an immediate success, and the two soon had a stable of comics creators supplying work to Fox Comics, Fiction HouseFiction House
Fiction House is an American publisher of pulp magazines and comic books that existed from the 1920s to the 1950s. Its comics division was best known for its pinup-style good girl art, as epitomized by the company's most popular character, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.-History:-Jumbo and Jack...
, Quality Comics
Quality Comics
Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company that operated from 1939 to 1956 and was an influential creative force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of comic books....
(for whom Eisner co-created such characters as Doll Man
Doll Man
Note: This article is about the Quality Comics character. For the Full Moon Features film Dollman, see Dollman . For the article on the movie's titular character, please see Brick Bardo....
and Blackhawk
Blackhawk (comics)
Blackhawk, a long-running comic book series, was also a film serial, a radio series and a novel. The comic book was published first by Quality Comics and later by DC Comics. The series was created by Will Eisner, Chuck Cuidera, and Bob Powell, but the artist most associated with the feature is Reed...
), and others.
Turning a profit of $1.50 a page, Eisner claimed that he "got very rich before I was 22," later detailing that in Depression-era
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
1939 alone, he and Iger "had split $25,000 between us", a considerable amount for the time. Eisner's original work even crossed the Atlantic, with Eisner drawing the new cover of the October 16, 1937 issue of Boardman Books
Boardman Books
Founded by Thomas Volney Boardman in the 1930s, T.V. Boardman, Ltd. , was but one of many London publishing houses turning out both paperback and hardcover books, pulp magazines, and comics. Boardman Books is best known for publishing the long-running monthly series of hardcover Bloodhound...
' comic-strip reprint tabloid Okay Comics Weekly.
In 1939, Eisner was commissioned to create Wonder Man
Wonder Man (Fox Publications)
Wonder Man is a fictional comic book superhero, created by Will Eisner, whose first appearance was Wonder Comics #1 .The character is of some historical significance by virtue of the lawsuit that resulted from his only appearance....
for Victor Fox, an accountant who had previously worked at DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
and was becoming a comic book publisher himself. Following Fox's instructions to create a Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
-type character, and using the pen name Willis, Eisner wrote and drew the first issue of Wonder Comics. Eisner said in interviews throughout his later life that he had protested the derivative nature of the character and story, and that when subpoenaed after National Periodical Publications, the company that would evolve into DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
, sued Fox, alleging Wonder Man was an illegal copy of Superman, Eisner testified that this was so, undermining Fox's case; Eisner even depicts himself doing so in his semi-autobiographical graphic novel The Dreamer. However, a transcript of the proceeding, uncovered by comics historian Ken Quattro in 2010, indicates Eisner in fact supported Fox and claimed Wonder Man as an original Eisner creation.
The Spirit
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
time," Eisner recalled in 1979, Quality Comics publisher Everett M. "Busy" Arnold "came to me and said that the Sunday newspapers were looking for a way of getting into this comic book boom," In a 2004 interview, he elaborated on that meeting:
Eisner negotiated an agreement with the syndicate in which Arnold would copyright The Spirit, but, "Written down in the contract I had with 'Busy' Arnold — and this contract exists today as the basis for my copyright ownership — Arnold agreed that it was my property. They agreed that if we had a split-up in any way, the property would revert to me on that day that happened. My attorney went to 'Busy' Arnold and his family, and they all signed a release agreeing that they would not pursue the question of ownership" This would include the eventual backup features "Mr. Mystic
Mr. Mystic
Mr. Mystic is comics series featuring a magician crime-fighter, created by Will Eisner and initially drawn by Bob Powell. The strip featured in four-page backup feature a Sunday-newspaper comic-book insert, known colloquially as "The Spirit Section"...
" and "Lady Luck
Lady Luck (comics)
Lady Luck is a fictional, American comic-strip and comic book crime fighter and adventuress created and designed in 1940 by Will Eisner with artist Chuck Mazoujian . Through 1946, she starred in a namesake, four-page weekly feature published in a Sunday-newspaper comic-book insert colloquially...
".
Selling his share of their firm to Iger, who would continue to package comics as the S. M. Iger Studio and as Phoenix Features through 1955, for $20,000, Eisner left to create The Spirit. "They gave me an adult audience", Eisner said in 1997, "and I wanted to write better things than superheroes. Comic books were a ghetto. I sold my part of the enterprise to my associate and then began The Spirit. They wanted an heroic character, a costumed character. They asked me if he'd have a costume. And I put a mask on him and said, 'Yes, he has a costume!'"
The Spirit, an initially eight- and later seven-page urban-crimefighter series, ran with the initial backup features "Mr. Mystic" and "Lady Luck" in a 16-page Sunday supplement (colloquially called "The Spirit Section") that was eventually distributed in 20 newspapers with a combined circulation of as many as five million copies. It premiered June 2, 1940, and continued through 1952.
World War II and Joe Dope
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He was assigned to the camp newspaper in Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
, where "there was also a big training program there, so I got involved in the use of comics for training. ... I finally became a warrant officer, which involved taking a test — that way you didn't have to go through Officer Candidate School
Officer Candidate School
Officer Candidate School or Officer Cadet School are institutions which train civilians and enlisted personnel in order for them to gain a commission as officers in the armed forces of a country....
." En route to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, he stopped at the Hollabird Depot in Baltimore, Maryland, where a mimeographed publication titled Army Motors was put together. "Together with the people there ... I helped develop its format. I began doing cartoons — and we began fashioning a magazine that had the ability to talk to the G.I.s in their language. So I began to use comics as a teaching tool, and when I got to Washington, they assigned me to the business of teaching — or selling — preventive maintenance." Eisner then created the educational comic strip and titular character Joe Dope for Army Motors, and spent four years working in The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
editing the ordnance magazine Firepower and doing "all the general illustrations — that is, cartoons" for Army Motors. He continued to work on that and its 1950 successor magazine, PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly is a monthly United States Army magazine published since June 1951 to illustrate proper preventive maintenance methods with comic book-style art...
.
While Eisner's later graphic novels were entirely his own work, he had a studio working under his supervision on The Spirit. In particular, letterer
Letterer
A letterer is a member of a team of comic book creators responsible for drawing the comic book's text. The letterer's use of typefaces, calligraphy, letter size, and layout all contribute to the impact of the comic. The letterer crafts the comic's "display lettering": the story title lettering and...
Abe Kanegson came up with the distinctive lettering style which Eisner himself would later imitate in his book-length works, and Kanegson would often rewrite Eisner's dialogue.
Eisner's most trusted assistant on The Spirit, however, was Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...
, later a renowned cartoonist, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
in his own right. Eisner later said of their working methods "You should hear me and Jules Feiffer going at it in a room. 'No, you designed the splash page for this one, then you wrote the ending — I came up with the idea for the story, and you did it up to this point, then I did the next page and this sequence here and...' And I'll be swearing up and down that 'he' wrote the ending on that one. We never agree".
So trusted were Eisner's assistants that Eisner allowed them to "ghost" The Spirit from the time that he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 until his return to civilian life in 1945. The primary wartime artists were the uncredited Lou Fine
Lou Fine
Louis Kenneth Fine was an American comic book artist known for his work during the 1940s Golden Age of comic books, where his quality draftsmanship became an influential model to a generation of fellow comics artists....
and Jack Cole
Jack Cole (artist)
Jack Ralph Cole was an American comic book artist and Playboy magazine cartoonist best known for creating the comedic superhero Plastic Man....
, with future Kid Colt, Outlaw
Kid Colt
Kid Colt is the name of two fictional characters in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The first is a cowboy whose adventures have taken place in numerous western themed comic book series published by Marvel...
artist Jack Keller
Jack Keller (comics)
Jack R. Keller was an American comic book artist best known for his 1950s and '60s work on the Marvel Comics Western character Kid Colt, and for his later hot rod and racecar series at Charlton Comics.-Early life and career:...
drawing backgrounds. Ghost writers included Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. He is best known for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains and for drawing on the native folklore of that region, but he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, detective...
and William Woolfolk. The wartime ghosted stories have been reprinted in DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' hardcover collections The Spirit Archives Vols. 5 to 11 (2001–2003), spanning July 1942 - December 1944.
On Eisner's return from service and resumption of his role in the studio, he created the bulk of the Spirit stories on which his reputation was solidified. The post-war years also saw him attempt to launch the comic-strip/comic-book series Baseball, John Law, Kewpies, and Nubbin the Shoeshine Boy; none succeeded, but some material was recycled into The Spirit.
American Visuals Corporation
During his World War II military service, Eisner had introduced the use of comics for training personnel in the publication Army Motors, for which he created the cautionary bumbling soldier Joe Dope, who illustrated various methods of preventive maintenancePreventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance has the following meanings:#The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment and facilities in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or...
of various military equipment and weapons. In 1948, while continuing to do The Spirit and seeing television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and other post-war trends eat at the readership base of newspapers, he formed the American Visuals Corporation in order to produce instructional materials for the government, related agencies, and businesses. One of his longest-running jobs was PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly is a monthly United States Army magazine published since June 1951 to illustrate proper preventive maintenance methods with comic book-style art...
, a digest size
Digest size
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 5½ x 8¼ inches, but can also be 5⅜ x 8⅜ inches and 5½ x 7½ inches. These sizes have evolved from the printing press operation end...
d magazine with comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
elements that he started for the Army in 1951 and continued to work on until the 1970s with Klaus Nordling
Klaus Nordling
Klaus Nordling was a Finnish American writer-artist for American comic books. He is best-known for his work on the 1940s masked-crimefighter feature "Lady Luck", and as co-creator of the Marvel Comics superhero the Thin Man. Some of Nordling's earliest comic books are signed F...
, Mike Ploog
Mike Ploog
Michael G. Ploog is an American storyboard and comic book artist, and a visual designer for movies....
, and other artists.
Other clients of his Connecticut-based company included RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
, the Baltimore Colts
History of the Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional football team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They play in the AFC South division of the National Football League. They have won 3 NFL championships and 2 Super Bowls....
NFL football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
team, and New York Telephone
New York Telephone
The New York Telephone Company was organized in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company.-Predecessor companies:...
.
Graphic novels
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's immigrant communities, particularly Jews, including The Building, A Life Force, Dropsie Avenue and To the Heart of the Storm. He continued producing new books into his seventies and eighties, at an average rate of nearly one a year. Each of these books was done twice — once as a rough version to show editor Dave Schreiner, then as a second, finished version incorporating suggested changes.
Some of his last work was the retelling in sequential art of novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s and myth
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
s, including Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
. In 2002, at the age of 85, he published Sundiata
Sundiata
Sundiata is a given name or surname, and may refer to:* Ibrahim K. Sundiata, American historian* Sekou Sundiata, African-American poet and performer* Sundiata Acoli , African-American prisoner...
, based on the part-historical, part-mythical stories of a West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
n king, "The Lion of Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
". Fagin the Jew
Fagin the Jew
Fagin the Jew is the title of a graphic novel by Will Eisner .In this book, Eisner retells the story of Fagin from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist from Fagin's point of view...
is an account of the life of Dickens' character Fagin, in which Eisner tries to get past the stereotyped portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
. His last graphic novel, The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , an account of the making of the anti-semitic hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, was completed shortly before his death and published in 2005 .
Academic work
In his later years especially, Eisner was a frequent lecturer about the craft and uses of sequential art. He taught at the School of Visual ArtsSchool of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
in New York City, where he published Will Eisner's Gallery, a collection of work by his students and wrote two books based on these lectures, Comics and Sequential Art
Comics and Sequential Art
Comics and Sequential Art is a 1985 book by Will Eisner that provides an analytical overview of comics. It is based on a series of essays that appeared in The Spirit magazine, themselves based on Eisner's experience teaching a course in sequential art at the School of Visual Arts...
and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative is a 1996 book by Will Eisner that provides an academic overview of comics, a companion to his earlier book Comics and Sequential Art....
, which are widely used by students of cartooning. In 2002, Eisner participated in the Will Eisner Symposium of the 2002 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels.
Death
Eisner died January 3, 2005, in Lauderdale LakesLauderdale Lakes, Florida
Lauderdale Lakes is a city in Broward County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 32,593. It is part of the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is home to 5,564,635 people....
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, of complications from a quadruple bypass surgery
Coronary artery bypass surgery
Coronary artery bypass surgery, also coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and colloquially heart bypass or bypass surgery is a surgical procedure performed to relieve angina and reduce the risk of death from coronary artery disease...
performed December 22, 2004. DC Comics held a memorial service in Manhattan's Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
, a neighborhood Eisner often visited in his work, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation
Angel Orensanz Center
The Angel Orensanz Center is located at 172 Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side of New York City, New York...
on Norfolk Street.
Eisner was survived by his wife, Ann Weingarten Eisner, and their son, John. In the introduction to the 2001 reissue of A Contract with God, Eisner revealed that the inspiration for the title story grew out of the 1970 death of his leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
-stricken teenaged daughter, Alice, next to whom he is buried. Until then, only Eisner's closest friends were aware of his daughter's life and death.
Awards and honors
Eisner has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonists SocietyNational Cartoonists Society
The National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops...
Comic Book Award for 1967, 1968, 1969, 1987 and 1988, as well as its Story Comic Book Award in 1979, and its highest accolade, the Reuben Award, for 1988.
He was inducted into the Academy of Comic Book Arts
Academy of Comic Book Arts
The Academy of Comic Book Arts is an American professional organization of the 1970s that was designed to be the comic book industry analog of such groups as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1970 and hosting its first awards ceremony in 1971 for work published in 1970,...
Hall of Fame in 1971, and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame
Kirby Award
The Jack Kirby Award for achievement in comic books was presented from 1985-1987 by Amazing Heroes magazine, and managed by Fantagraphics employee Dave Olbrich...
in 1987. The following year, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards
Eisner Award
The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...
were established in his honor.
He received in 1975 the second Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
Every year, the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême is awarded during the Angoulême International Comics Festival to an author for his body of work and/or for his achievement in the evolution of comics....
.
With Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
, Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
, Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
, Gary Panter
Gary Panter
Gary Panter is an illustrator, painter, designer and part-time musician. Panter's work is representative of the post-underground, new wave comics movement that began with the end of Arcade: The Comics Revue and the initiation of RAW, one of the second generation in American underground comix...
, and Chris Ware
Chris Ware
Franklin Christenson Ware , is an American comic book artist and cartoonist, widely known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he resides in the Chicago area, Illinois...
, Eisner was among the artists honored in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum
Jewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007.
On the 94th anniversary of Eisner's birth, in 2011, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
used an image featuring the Spirit as its logo.
Books
.; ........; ; .......... and .......... (no Eisner work in volumes 5–11)-
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
....; .. (anthology collecting , and . (anthology collecting , , and . (anthology collecting , , and , along with the short stories and .
External links
. WebCitation archive.- Tumulka, Wes, ed. Wildwood Cemetery: The Spirit Database. WebCitation archive.
- Archive of Heintjes, Tom. "Will Eisner's The Spirit", AdventureStrips.com, n.d.. Original page.
- Fitzgerald, Paul E. "Every Picture Tells A Story: His Pen and Wit Sharper Than Ever, Graphic Novelist Will Eisner Takes On Religious Intolerance", The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, June 3, 2004. WebCitation archive. - Robinson, Tasha. "Interview: Will Eisner", The A.V. ClubThe A.V. ClubThe A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
/ The OnionThe OnionThe Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...
, September 27, 2000. WebCitation archive. - Jacks, Brian. "Veterans Day Exclusive: 'The Spirit' Creator Will Eisner's Wartime Memories", MTV.com, November 11, 2000. WebCitation archive.
- Ohio State: Will Eisner Collection Archive of material trimmed from print-magazine interview. Archive of interview excerpts originally posted online. Interview conducted September 10, 1968; originally published in WitzendWitzendwitzend, published on an irregular schedule spanning decades, was an underground comic showcasing contributions by comic book professionals, leading illustrators and new artists. witzend was launched in 1966 by the writer-artist Wallace Wood, who handed the reins to Bill Pearson from 1968–1985...
#6 (Spring 1969). - "Interview with Jerry Iger", Cubic Zirconia Reader, 1985. WebCitation archive.
Further reading
- Feiffer, Jules, The Great Comic-Book Heroes, ISBN 1-56097-501-6
- Jones, Gerard, Men Of Tomorrow ISBN 0-434-01402-8
- Steranko, JimJim SterankoJames F. Steranko is an American graphic artist, comic book writer-artist-historian, magician, publisher and film production illustrator....
, The Steranko History of Comics 2 (Supergraphics, 1972)