Will Eisner was one of the most gifted and innovative storytellers that American comics have produced. His most famous and influential creation was The Spirit, a hero he killed off by page three, then brought back. The mask was incidental; the rest of his costume was a blue suit, fedora and tie. One of the hallmarks of an Eisner Spirit story were the exquisitely designed title pages where The Spirit appeared as a visual device in every issue (as a headline in a newspaper, scraps of paper in the wind, as shattered bricks). Then there were the women: Eisner peopled his comics with the very best femme fatales - Sand Saref, P'Gell, Silken Floss - all with a kiss me, kill me agenda.Over time, Eisner became a master of the short comic book story, experimenting with the grammar of a form in its infancy, cribbing cinematic techniques for the funny-books and influencing the field to this day.
Although he retired The Spirit in the 50's, Eisner's influence continued when in 1978, he established the graphic novel as a form of literature with A Contract With God, a book of four stroies about the residents of an old Jewish tenement in the Bronx. He continued to create, working on twenty graphic novels until his death in 2005.
2 comments:
Nice artwork. Pity The Spirit movie is meant to be arse. I kept trying to work up the enthusiasm to go see it, but never managed to summon it.
No, nor me. As Frank Miller was a protege of Eisner, it's appalling the shoddy job he made of it (although I haven't seen it yet, the reviews have been bad across the board). Mr. Eisner must be spinnning in his grave...
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