Eisner will certainly be missed.. I meant to send on a note about 2 days ago when I first heard about it..
I'm lucky enough to have had many Eisner originals in my career as an art seller.. For many years in my own collection I had a very early 1941 Spirit splash page that I sold in 1993 for $7500.
My favorite Spirit story was from 1948 called "Plaster of Paris" which was also reprinted in the 1966 Harvey comics. I was totally thrilled in 1988 when I was actually able to acquire the complete 7 page story (meaning the art folks) which is one of the few comic art items I still own.. I've been offered a lot of dough for that story..... but I've stuck with it through thick & thin....
Eisner himself was a wonderful gentleman whom I had many pleasures to meet & even had breakfast with once. I saw him only last year and he was such a robust man that I felt he was in better shape at 85 years old than most people half his age.. To tell the truth.. I thought he might live forever..
Fortunately, his legacy will live forever.
Rich============================
At 12:24 PM 1/6/05, Movielegends wrote:
Will Eisner, 87, pioneer in graphic novels, comics THE ASSOCIATED PRESS January 6, 2005
MIAMI - Will Eisner, the artist who revolutionized comic books, helped popularize the graphic novel and taught generations of soldiers how to maintain their equipment with the "Joe Dope" series, died Monday. He was 87.
Eisner died in Florida Medical Center in Lauderdale Lakes of complications from quadruple bypass heart surgery last month, said Denis Kitchen, Eisner's agent and publisher for three decades.
"He was absolutely the greatest innovator the industry ever saw," Kitchen said.
Eisner started making comics in the 1930s and was the first to use "silent" balloonless panels to emphasize characters' emotions by focusing attention on finely wrought facial expressions.
He addressed subjects considered unthinkable in comic books and rarely seen at the time in newspaper comics: spousal abuse, tax audits, urban blight and graft.
"He set not only a high standard of work, he has opened the door that very few people have gone through, which is to recognize comics as a legitimate storytelling medium," said Max Allan Collins, whose graphic novel "Road to Perdition" was turned into a movie starring Tom Hanks.
The graphic novel is a genre that combines elements of comic books and literary novels. Eisner's first, "A Contract with God," was published in 1978 and had stories of his childhood and the immigrant Jewish experience in a poor Brooklyn tenement.
"He had a real capacity to bring hope to the most dire circumstances ... the toils of immigrant life," said Robert Weil, an executive editor at W.W. Norton, which is publishing two Eisner books this year.
In 1940, he created a gritty weekly newspaper supplement titled "The Spirit," which at its height had a circulation of 5 million in 20 Sunday newspapers. The supplement consisted of a comic book with three self-contained stories, and "The Spirit" became the most popular.
Its title character was a coroner named Denny Colt, believed murdered by a mad scientist's potion but actually buried alive. He protected the fictional Central City, which was based on New York.
But the series' lead character usually took a back seat to others. "The stories would focus not necessarily on 'The Spirit,' but on some poor average Joe who was having a bad day," Collins said.
Eisner "had been producing comic books for 15-year-old cretins from Kansas," he told The Associated Press in a 1998 interview. With "The Spirit," he was aiming for "a 55-year-old who had his wallet stolen on the subway. You can't talk about heartbreak to a kid."
"He was a master of combining words and pictures, creating a totally believable film-noirish world," said cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer, who worked as an assistant on "The Spirit" series.
Eisner was drafted during World War II, and the Army had him create "Joe Dope" to teach Jeep maintenance to soldiers with a bumbling comic-strip character.
"Will was a multi-faceted treasure," said Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics, which has released reprints of "The Spirit." Eisner was "a pioneer as a cartoonist as well as a young entrepreneur at the dawn of comic books."
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