Will Eisner: Conversations

A Talk with Will Eisner

79 A Talk with Will Eisner TED WHITE, MITCH BERGER, AND MIKE BARSON / 1983 From Heavy Metal, 7 (November 1983), 45–47. Reprinted by permission of Heavy Metal. Will Eisner may not be a genius, but in the history of comics, he’ll do until the real thing comes along. People think they are doing Eisner a favor by comparing The Spirit to Citizen Kane, but The Spirit came out every week for thirteen years, and Citizen Kane, wonderful as it was, was just one movie. The fact is, even without The Spirit in his resumé, Will Eisner could lay claim to being the most important artist/writer/editor/creator/packager of the Golden Age of Comics. Blackhawk, Sheena, Uncle Sam—Eisner created and developed them all, along with Doll Man, Espionage, Hawks of the Seas, and a dozen others he professes to have forgotten. And this was before World War II. There are many creators and many great creations: Segar and Thimble Theater ; Barks and Uncle Scrooge; Kelly and Pogo; Kurtzman and Mad; Herriman and Krazy Kat; Cole and Plastic Man; Caniff and Terry; Kane and Batman; Gould and Dick Tracy. But of all of these, only Barks and his Donald Duck/ Uncle Scrooge stories can really rank with the constant inventiveness, humor , and impact of The Spirit. Eisner did things with storylines, visuals, and characterization that had never been done before in one strip. Parody, tragedy , humor, suspense, action, slapstick, sorrow—The Spirit had them all. Not every week perhaps, and not always at optimum effect . . . but Eisner had the nerves of a riverboat gambler, and there was nothing he was afraid to try. Most of the time, he had the skill to carry it off. And when he failed—well, a lot of comic artists and writers wish they could achieve in their work what passed for failure in The Spirit. But talking about this is boring. The Spirit has to be read, and read again, to appreciate the enormity of Eisner’s achievement. Luckily for us all, the stories 80 will eisner: conversations from the forties and fifties are being made available in a variety of inexpensive formats. As Jim Steranko once described The Spirit, “Never has so much happened, to so many, in so few pages.” And expanding on that—never have so many unique things happened, to so many fascinating characters, with such effective results. And even that’s not enough. Only the stories are enough. Will Eisner has told hundreds of them, and he has more to tell. And that’s a very, very good thing to know. —Mike Barson HM: I guess we should begin at the beginning, back before The Spirit had been created. Eisner: About two years after I got out of high school, around 1938, I started a little company called Eisner and Iger in New York. We had one of the first bullpens of comic artists, with people like Bob Kane (Batman), who was doing a feature called Peter Pupp for us, and Jack Kurtzburg, who later became known as Jack Kirby. Actually, we also called him Jack Curtis and Jack Kurdery on his stories—we had lots of house names. I myself was doing five features under five different names. HM: Such as? Eisner: One was Willis R. Rensie—that’s “Eisner” backwards—another was W. Morgan Thomas, another, Spencer Steele—that’s a marvelous name, isn’t it? I always wanted to be named Spencer Steele. That was when I still had hair, of course. HM: I used to see those names on Jumbo and Jungle comics, and they didn’t seem real. Eisner: It was all part of the fantasy world of comics. Eisner & Iger started with $15.00—I financed the operation, so my name came first—and pretty soon we were flourishing. The idea of doing original art for comic books was a new one, but it was obvious to me that the newspaper syndicate stuff, that comic books were reprinting, was going to run out eventually, and that original material would be needed. HM: So tell us what it was like for twenty-two-year-old Will Eisner walking from syndicate to syndicate, trying to peddle his character, the Spirit. Eisner: I didn’t go to them; they came to me. Eisner & Iger was making a lot of money—we were producing the entire Fiction House line, and that was [3.141.2.96] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 14:27...