Will Eisner: Conversations

Will Eisner Interview

47 Will Eisner Interview CAT YRONWODE / 1978 From The Comics Journal, No. 46 (May 1979), 35–49, and No. 47 (July 1979), 41–48. Reprinted by permission of catherine yronwode. yronwode: Since you are best known to comic book readers as the creator of The Spirit, suppose we start with a history of that era—how did you come to create that character? Eisner: It was in 1940, late ’39, to be exact—the Register and Tribune Syndicate asked me to produce a newspaper insert for them, called a ready-print, which would be in comic book format. Now that was the mission. They left for me a certain amount of freedom to develop the characters that I wanted to do, to develop the material I thought would be appropriate. By “freedom” I mean that they had no prerequisites or requirements in the way of stories or ideas, other than that they said they wanted stuff that was in the genre of comic books. You must understand that the years between 1936 and 1940 saw the rise of comic books as a popular reading force and the newspapers, ever alert to trends, sought to latch on. There was a very commercial interest in the comic book insert—in fact, at the same time, King Features started a competitive one. Theirs only ran a few months, but couldn’t make it. So, as I said, I had freedom and I developed three features. It was a sixteenpage book, eight pages of the feature that I would personally produce and then two four-page features—Mr. Mystic and perhaps Lady Luck. Mr. Mystic I assigned to Bob Powell, now deceased, and Lady Luck was assigned to Chuck Mazoujian, who could really draw—he was a very good artist—but the writing was done either by me or by another writer—a freelancer outside the shop. Klaus Nordling took it over from Mazoujian and John Celardo in about 1947 . . . I think. 48 will eisner: conversations yronwode: How many people were working with you at that time? Eisner: About four or five. You see, I had left Eisner and Iger in order to do The Spirit; I sold Jerry Iger my 50 percent stock interest in the Eisner and Iger Corporation, and with it went all the customers and all the properties, including Sheena, which I had created, and a whole bunch of other features. But I took with me some of the good artists like Lou Fine, Bob Powell, Chuck Mazoujian , and a couple of others, in order to create a staff that would be able to produce not only The Spirit but whatever other comics we were involved with in partnership with “Busy” Arnold, who headed the Quality Comic Group. These comic books were, I believe, Hit Comics, Police Comics, and Military Comics . For these I created Uncle Sam, Blackhawks, and others. As far as the creation of The Spirit itself, I had the idea that I would like to do a kind of detective feature. This was for me an enormous opportunity. I wouldn’t have left Eisner and Iger, which was a profitable operation, to take the risk of doing The Spirit, which could easily have been cancelled within six months, leaving me totally out of work or out of business, unless I felt that this was something I couldn’t let go by—so it was not only a tremendous financial gamble but also a career risk. I had to believe at the time that I could make what I called “the big time.” After all, newspapers were the major leagues then, at least as far as cartoonists were concerned. yronwode: As for the character of The Spirit himself—at that time, superpowered characters were proliferating wildly and detective stories were actually being phased out . . . Eisner: Well, what I was really interested in was developing the kind of character who could be a vehicle for the kind of stories I wanted to do. I had always wanted to do short stories. I always regarded comics as a legitimate medium, my medium. Creating a detective character would, as far as I was concerned, provide me with the most viable vehicle for the kind of stories I could best tell. The syndicate people weren’t in full agreement with me. They wanted to have some kind of mysterioso character that emulated the so-called superheroes , so in my first discussion with “Busy” Arnold, his thinking centered around a superhero kind of...