Will Eisner Champion of the Graphic Novel ( PDFDrive )

Eisner writing, November 1941.

Detail, “Quirte,” The Spirit no. 442, November 14, 1948. Titles rarely appeared on the original sections and were assigned to the stories in their subsequent printings.

A WHEN YOU PICK UP YOUR Sunday newspaper, even if it’s not as thick as it was a generation ago, it still probably includes sections that have never gone near the paper’s editorial department or printing presses. Those entire sections of coupons and advertising promotion called FSIs (freestanding inserts) are delivered complete to the local newspaper (most often through News America Marketing), as is Parade magazine (packaged and printed by Advance Publications) and a variety of advertorial or specialized sections. The idea (in America, anyway) goes back to 1935 and a magazine-format supplement entitled This Week, which peaked at a circulation surpassing forty million copies and lasted for more than thirty years. Busy Arnold had an acquaintance at the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, a sales representative named Henry Martin, who wanted to develop a sixteen-page Sunday supplement of original comics material. Presumably Martin was aware of the four-year-old This Week and, looking at newspapers’ use of their own comic strip sections and the booming sales figures for comic books, saw an opportunity in combining the ideas. Martin approached Arnold, and, in late 1939, the publisher turned to his most talented and reliable supplier of creative material: Will Eisner. Martin could sell the distribution deals that would bring in the revenue; Arnold could organize printing and logistics; and Eisner

could fill the pages. The newspapers would receive printed, bundled copies early enough each week to be inserted into their Sunday papers. The negotiations were complex, since there hadn’t been a project quite like this before, but perhaps the most amazing aspect was that there was any negotiation at all. The contracts that newspaper syndicates gave their cartoonists for new strips were very one-sided, and if there was any negotiation, it was about the amount of money that would be paid to the cartoonist upon delivery of his work. Many of the comic book publishers that had sprung up didn’t bother with contracts at all or worked with brief assignments granting the publishers all rights without even the participation in revenues common to the strip deals. With the Depression pressing hard on their families, most cartoonists were satisfied to be bringing home the few dollars that would pay their rent. Eisner discussing The Spirit with artists Nick Cardy and Bob Powell, 1941. Because of the studio system and the amount of work produced under deadline, artwork was generally the collective effort of Eisner and his assistants during the original run of The Spirit.

But Eisner discovered his skill in creative problem solving extended to business negotiations as well. Of his peers in the comic book world, only Joe Simon had demonstrated any skill at negotiation, working out an agreement with Timely (the company that would become Marvel decades later) to receive a share of profits from the Captain America comic that Simon created with Eisner’s old studio artist, Jack Kirby. (And that deal would end badly, with Simon and Kirby leaving in a dispute over their payments a year later.) Until that time, the only agreement truly favorable to a creator had been the one for Wonder Woman, but her creator, William Moulton Marston, was a lawyer (he was also an author, psychologist, radio performer, and a generation older than Eisner). Eisner knew he could use the shop system to ensure smooth delivery of the work, and there was no real negotiation about what kind of comics would be in the pages—that was his area of expertise. The economic structures of the deal have never been made public, but the potential for success was clearly great enough to make this Eisner’s chance of a lifetime: Do a great job, reach millions of readers a week, and the modest fees per copy that the newspapers paid would have enough profit built in to them for all to share. One of the stumbling blocks was copyright. In the newspaper syndication business, it was standard for the syndicate to own the copyright (as well as the trademark and the ability to continue the strip, in certain circumstances, without the original artist). This effectively left the cartoonist’s creations hostage in the hands of the syndicate and led to a monumental set of legal battles in the early twentieth century between cartoonist Rudolph Dirks and the Hearst newspaper empire. Dirks had left Hearst, which continued his Katzenjammer Kids, and launched a look-alike series called Hans und Fritz, then The Captain and the Kids, for the rival Pulitzer papers. Courts held that Hearst had the rights to the strip but couldn’t prevent Dirks from working in his own style. But The Katzenjammer Kids long outlasted Dirks’s revised version and remains the longest-running syndicated strip today … without Dirks or his heirs profiting from it for close to a hundred years. Comic book publishers were generally equally demanding, while providing even less financial participation to their creative talent (with a few notable exceptions). Eisner didn’t want to be boxed in that way, and it was important to him for more than simply financial reasons. As his friend, former MAD Magazine co- editor Nick Meglin, put it, “Eisner wanted to be in control of his own fate.” Eisner also wanted to ensure that the characters he created and the stories he told would ultimately be his. But Arnold had a more legitimate rationale for pushing

Eisner on this issue than simple greed. Both men could see that the war raging in Europe was likely to involve America at some point, and if the draft took Eisner, Arnold didn’t want to lose the project along with him. On the other hand, Eisner didn’t want to lose his creation or lose out on its hoped-for success. As a negotiator, Eisner was a good listener, and he understood early that deals are sealed when solutions address the actual needs of both parties rather than simply precedents and principles. He reached a resolution with Arnold that solved both their issues: The copyright would initially be in Arnold’s name but would ultimately revert to Eisner, with all the work that had been created, when the partnership ended. Arnold, therefore, would be able to (and ultimately did) step in and keep the project moving if Eisner were drafted. An unusual solution for the time, but an effective one—more effective, from a creator’s point of view, than any contract that would be negotiated in comic books or comic strips for decades thereafter.

The Spirit dailies begin, October 13, 1941. The Spirit newspaper strip ran from 1941 to March 11, 1944, officially placing Eisner in the ranks of other respected cartoonists of that form. Next four images: Four more Spirit dailies, October 14–17, 1941. After the initial six weeks by Eisner, The Spirit managed to run even while he was in the military, with extraordinarily talented artists Lou Fine and Jack Cole illustrating most of the episodes. Fine illustrated many of the most beautiful stories published by Busy Arnold’s Quality Comics, and Cole created the enduring super hero Plastic Man.



One problem remained, however: Arnold’s respect for Eisner’s abilities wasn’t matched by his opinion of Jerry Iger, nor were Iger’s selling skills particularly useful for this new venture. Arnold also wanted Eisner’s complete attention on this weekly, or at least on projects he would supervise, such as Police Comics, which would include reprints from the new newspaper section as well as original material. The Eisner and Iger partnership would have to end. IGER TRIED TO DISCOURAGE Eisner and convince him to keep the shop going with both of them. The shop had grown into a profitable venture over the past few years, and there was no guarantee that this new proposition would succeed or that the upcoming war wouldn’t pluck Eisner away and he’d have to watch the supplement wither from a foxhole. These were all reasonable arguments, but Iger had an ulterior motive as well. Confident as he was in his own salesmanship, it was the work Eisner produced that had set such a high standard. And Arnold wasn’t the only client who had issues with Iger. Fiction House also got along better with Eisner and was unhappy that he was leaving the partnership. But Sheena was selling their Jungle Comics title, so even if Eisner left, they’d continue working with Iger’s solo shop, at least for a while. Eisner’s mind, however, was made up. The supplement was a new challenge, and new challenges would always prove interesting to Eisner. But more than that, the opportunity combined two appeals that were probably stronger than either money or the creative possibilities per se. First was a new audience: Comic books were perceived to be for readers who were either young children or semiliterate adults. This supplement would be part of newspapers, which went to households where adults would read it and, depending on which newspapers chose to run with it, potentially sophisticated adults. (Of the big papers, only the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal eschewed comics entirely, and New York had a half dozen other dailies, not to mention the leading papers of other cities.) Eisner later described his feelings as a “passion to do my own newspaper feature, to write and draw for an adult audience.” Possibly more significant in the back of Eisner’s mind, though not something he articulated in his many recollections of the moment, was that the shift in venue might earn him respect, even change the way he was viewed as an artist. The newspaper-strip cartoonists were being compared to syndicated columnists such as Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan, powerful figures in popular culture and even politics. Comic book artists and writers, even when their characters were immense commercial successes, were regarded with disdain. As a first- generation American, Eisner must have felt the powerful lure of the respect and

generation American, Eisner must have felt the powerful lure of the respect and acceptance that would come from an association with the newspaper industry. The last step in the transition away from Eisner and Iger was negotiating which of the artists could go with Eisner. A weekly comic would require more work than Eisner could do solo, but artists were valuable “assets” of the shop, so Iger wouldn’t let Eisner decimate the business on his way out. As though they were baseball players being traded to an expansion team, Eisner got to take Lou Fine, Bob Powell, and Chuck Mazoujian along with him to his new venture. Their partnership agreement contained a fairly standard “put” clause: The partner who wanted to dissolve the arrangement had to name a price at which he was willing to either buy the other out or be bought out. In this situation, where Eisner couldn’t both continue the old shop and start his new venture, he was forced to name a relatively low price, and in the end it was settled at $20,000 (approximately $300,000 in 2015 dollars)—clearly a modest amount for a successful venture that was providing both partners with very comfortable lifestyles. But hands were shaken, papers drafted, and Eisner moved on. SO EISNER DECAMPED TO Tudor City, an apartment complex now with prestigious adjacency to the United Nations but then overlooking an industrial wasteland by the river. Eisner made the bedroom space his office, and the rest was for the artists. They had about six months to develop the insert and build up a few finished weeks to be ahead of the printing deadlines. The sixteen-page section could have more than one series, and Arnold and Martin wanted a costumed hero for the lead feature, to cash in on the momentum that Superman had established (the term “super hero” hadn’t yet come into common usage). Eisner wanted a more human character, building him, as he put it, “from the inside out … his personality—the kind of man he would be, how he would look at problems, how he would feel about life.” He wanted someone who could both act and react, which was far from the kind of characters running around the early super-hero comics. The lead feature was to be a detective strip, perhaps with a touch of the wit of a good movie comedy. Arnold suggested names, and the Spirit stuck. To assuage his partners, Eisner reluctantly gave his star a mask and gloves, talked to them about his blue suit as though it was a costume element, and made his identity a secret (complete with a hideaway in the cemetery) … but Eisner never lost sight of the goal of keeping him completely human at heart.

Above and next: “Killer McNobby,” The Spirit no. 53, June 1, 1941. Eisner began to experiment with storytelling approaches, both rhetorically (with this episode composed entirely in rhyme) and visually (discarding panel borders for an open structure). His crystal clear, if unconventional, storytelling integrated lettering as a tool for leading the reader’s eye through the action.



The Spirit would be eight pages each week—a good, solid length by the standards of the time. With Eisner’s precise pacing, it was long enough for a series of scenes to take the characters through a complex minuet of action and emotion, if not the series of clues that prose-detective-story authors such as Agatha Christie were laying out for their readers. While this would be a detective series, they wouldn’t be detective stories. Eisner was modeling the work on short story writers such as O. Henry and Saki, writers whose witty plot twists became cultural markers for decades. “I learned that the way to write a short story was to start with the ending and work your way up to it,” Eisner later commented. He wanted to craft episodes straightforward enough for the young people in the family to enjoy the action, yet layered enough for the adults to smile at the humor, human relationships, and maybe even the strong, sexy ladies. Detective Denny Colt would be a hero who would act as a foil for his stories but who would not necessarily be their driving force. The rest of the comics section would be split between two other series Eisner created with his studio artists: Lady Luck with Mazoujian and Mr. Mystic with Powell. Both were very standard tropes of the times: the rich lady adventuress and the magician detective. Eisner would write the first few episodes to launch the series, and then they would carry on for years, neither revolutionary nor memorable. The players were in place. ON JUNE 2, 1940, Denny Colt made his debut … and promptly died. Eisner introduced his detective with jaunty body language, lots of attitude and overconfidence, and a close relationship with Police Commissioner Dolan (and that was all in the first half dozen panels). The cartoonist already knew his character well. Colt went off to capture the villainous Dr. Cobra and was found dead, drowned in a flood of toxic chemicals. After his funeral, Colt woke from suspended animation, dug himself out, and assumed a new role as the Spirit, haunting Wildwood Cemetery and keeping his city safe with Dolan’s connivance. The script of that first adventure sets up more than its artwork: Eisner already has Colt bandying with Dolan, and it’s Dolan who gets in the killing shot, not the hero. The artwork is darker and more atmospheric than that of most comic books of the time, and a couple of panels show Eisner experimenting with camera angles. Despite his admiration for Millton Caniff, Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates is far richer stylistically, but The Spirit was only beginning. The Spirit launched with a circulation of about a million and a half in five newspapers, a total that exceeded any traditionally distributed comic book,

although it didn’t place in the higher ranks of syndicated strips. With its unique financial model, however, it was profitable, and Eisner was in business. He’d have the opportunity to learn on the job. EVEN WITH THE WORKAHOLIC ethic of the Depression-era artists, doing eight pages of comics a week—script, pencil, and ink—would have been impossible for most. Adding in Eisner’s other responsibilities for the section, it was clear that he couldn’t do it all. Over time many of the former Eisner and Iger artists would spend days at Tudor City, but so would others who would have their own effect on popular culture, most notably in the postwar period: Dave Berg (MAD’s “The Lighter Side of …”); Al Jaffee (the MAD “Fold-In”); and a very young Joe Kubert (Sgt. Rock). The relentless deadlines had a concomitant virtue, however, in constant learning and evolution, even if there were some moments to look back on and wince. Detail, “Eldas Thayer,” The Spirit no. 8, July 21, 1940.

The most distinctive trademark of Eisner’s Spirit stories would be his use of the “splash” page, the opening image of each tale. Traditional newspaper comic strips had only a single page (at most) each Sunday, so there was no room for a complex or dynamic introductory panel. Comic books had a cover to work with, and some publishers were learning how to use that space dynamically with bold logos (particularly Ira Schnapp’s on the titles that would become DC Comics) and art that was either rich (particularly on the Fiction House line) or funny. But since The Spirit was a newspaper supplement that had no cover, Eisner stuck with the Sunday-page approach and dived right in with Denny Colt intruding on Commissioner Dolan’s office. The private detective and the police official were a pretty generic pair as the story opened, but Eisner’s strong ability to portray character through body language and “acting” quickly made them distinctive. A handful of panels in, Dolan is ushering Colt out, and we can almost hear Cary Grant reciting Colt’s, “Wait a minute, hold on!” The first hint of the legendary Spirit splash pages wouldn’t materialize for six or seven weeks, while the layering of Dolan and Colt’s relationship would grow over ensuing episodes, but in the meantime two characters joined the cast who would travel with Denny Colt through the whole run of the series: Ellen Dolan and Ebony White. Respectively the classic romantic interest and comic relief, they were introduced at the beginning of the very second episode on June 9, 1940. Each has dimensions that make it easy to look back from the twenty- first century with some discomfort. Ellen is the commissioner’s frequently endangered daughter, who falls for the Spirit at first meeting and would have some serious growing to do over the run of the series to become a modern woman; and Ebony, oh, Ebony. Eisner would look back on his stereotypical little minstrel taxi driver and the spirit of the times: “What was regarded as funny was anyone who looked different. The whole culture accepted Amos ’n’ Andy. It never occurred to me that I might have offended black sensibilities.” Art Spiegelman notes that cartooning instructional manuals of the time were full of lessons on how to use visual stereotypes to depict racial groups—the Chinaman and the Jew as well— depictions Spiegelman would turn on their heads with his Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus two generations later, powerfully placing menacing cat identities on the Nazis and making the oppressed Jews mice. Eisner had absorbed this racist shorthand from his youth and didn’t have the ability to step aside and reject it. Despite that, Spiegelman added, “For the kind of minstrelsy the Spirit’s sidekick Ebony represented, [he] was very humanized and very sympathetic.” And Ebony (as well as Eisner’s other depictions of racial groups)

would evolve somewhat over the run, though not into a figure any later generation would find acceptable.

Next eight images: “The Tale of the Dictator’s Reform,” The Spirit no. 56, June 22 1941. Europe was at war, and Eisner felt it growing closer. This story was published the day the German army began Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which would bring Russia into World War II on the side of the Allies.













Detail, “Eldas Thayer,” The Spirit no. 8, July 21, 1940.

Ellen would serve as a comedic foil, sporting a Spirit-given black eye, or draped over his knee for a spanking, or declaring herself the Spirit’s rival by starting her own detective agency. As Eisner’s ability to depict expression grew more and more subtle, Ellen would show every possible form of exasperation with her elusive quarry as the Spirit flirted his way through the stories. Both Ellen and Ebony also undoubtedly suffered from Eisner’s lack of worldly experience at the beginning of The Spirit. As a twenty-three-year-old who had no opportunities to spend time with a more diverse crowd than either his home or high school circles, or the very white and male group that populated his studios, Eisner’s reference points were limited. His Spirit reflected and reinforced the popular culture that surrounded it, without trying to break free. Eisner wasn’t unwilling to feature strong women in The Spirit, but their strength was in direct relation to their potential for villainy. The Spirit’s deadlier flirtations began early: In the third episode we meet his first villainess, a powerful lawyer with the nickname the Black Queen. Unlike the deadly ladies of Eisner’s later work, she doesn’t start off with a dead husband or lover in evidence, and doesn’t immediately fall for the Spirit … but the potential’s there. As is a nice beauty shot of her in lingerie. She’d add poison lipstick to her arsenal and offer to give the Spirit a fatal kiss before he’d close her case file permanently. By early 1941, the next of the femmes fatales shows up. Silk Satin is much tougher (digging a bullet out of her arm in her very first scene), sexier … and torn between killing the Spirit and kissing him. Eisner also thought more about naming characters by now and acknowledged he had been influenced by the work of Chester Gould on Dick Tracy. With Silk, Eisner began to artfully “relate the names of the character to the nature of the character,” using flamboyant names more colorfully and effectively than he had with Dr. Cobra. And, seductive as the texture of her name was, Silk is far from the most beautiful of Eisner’s women. Although he isn’t unaware of the female form (back when he was sixteen, his mother had complained bitterly when she saw his drawings of a nude model), his ability to capture the subtleties of expression that would make his women so sensual had only started to develop.

Production stat for “The Spirit! Who Is He?,” The Spirit no. 20, October 13, 1940. The splash page invited readers into the story, and starting with this strip, Eisner’s splashes began to evolve into his visual signature. Appropriately enough, this splash borrows the look of the newspapers that would contain his Spirit supplement.

Original art for the splash of “The Prom,” The Spirit no. 27, December 1, 1940. Most of the early artwork from The Spirit was destroyed after publication; the printing plates, deemed more valuable, were preserved instead. This rare splash shows both the fine detail that was sometimes lost in reproduction and the use of white opaque ink to adjust details. This is the oldest surviving example of original art from the series.

Original art for the splash of “The Haunted House,” The Spirit no. 28, December 8, 1940. A favorite of Eisner’s, this splash was prepared for reuse in Police Comics, a standard-format comic book published by Busy Arnold. The art would later reappear as the cover of the souvenir program of the 1968 International Convention of Comic Art held in New York City, which celebrated Eisner as its guest of honor at his first- ever comic book convention.

Eisner’s art grew more solid in every aspect, week by week. The linework is still scratchy, and the composition varies wildly from page to page and even from panel to panel, but the camera work became more daring. And he was clearly rereading classic short stories for inspiration. The August 11, 1940, episode brings back Ellen Dolan and her hapless fiancé, Homer Creep. The Spirit conducts a fake kidnapping of Ellen to allow Creep a moment of daring heroism, only to have it backfire, leaving Homer an ex-fiancé and the Spirit the new object of Ellen’s affections. If it’s not “The Ransom of Red Chief,” it still feels as if Eisner had his dose of O. Henry that week. Jules Feiffer described Eisner’s connection to short stories, films, theater, and even radio shows such as Suspense this way: “He was clearly influenced by many people, but he translated what he was reading into the form he was working in. He was doing it in an unselfconscious, natural way, because there was no precedent, nobody to steal from.” While all this happened in the stories, the fundamental look of The Spirit evolved over the first few months as Eisner began to make his splash pages distinctive. If you asked a latter-day comic book artist for the visual signature of the series, the answer would certainly be the splash pages. The peak of Eisner’s glory using this technique would come several years later, but in 1940 there is already evidence of the importance he assigned to it. By the fall, the first Spirit splash that rises to the standard Eisner would define for the field shows up as a mock newspaper: “The Spirit! Who Is He?” (October 13, 1940). Eisner’s philosophy about that first page would grow more and more to encompass an art director’s approach, finding images that were able to encapsulate a story idea, thus setting the mood and atmosphere. As Eisner explained it decades after: “My audience was transitory. I had to catch these people on the fly, so to speak, so I began to design the front cover as dramatically as I could, and entice people into the story.” By the end of that first summer, there was a large image on that first page each week, along with a single panel or continuous story image.

“Ebony’s X-Ray Eyes,” The Spirit no. 16, September 15, 1940. An experiment with special effects in a story about Ebony’s “X-ray eyes,” a super power that was first introduced in a character named Olga Mesmer in 1938, packaged by a studio that rivaled Eisner and Iger.

Detail, “Hildie and the Kid Gang,” The Spirit no. 293, January 6, 1946.

Eisner’s storytelling was quickly falling into place, too. With a weekly rhythm, it was easy to see what worked and what didn’t. Use of awkward, almost random, angular panels vanished, and more interesting camera angles came into play. “[People] were beginning to read the way movies taught us to read, which was making a camera out of us,” Eisner commented later. “So I began to use those [techniques] in The Spirit.” It wasn’t only the camera that shifted. Body language for the characters became progressively subtler, a shrug or gesture adding to the emotion of the moment in ways that a simple speech balloon couldn’t. Eisner’s characters were acting, probably more in the exaggerated fashion of the stage than of film, but they were coming to life. By the spring of 1941, he began to use the other tools available, including working with color in “Ebony’s X-Ray Eyes,” a negative- style image for The Spirit’s first special effect, and the first hint of how Eisner would use lettering styles to establish mood. Unlike the splash pages, which became uniquely associated with Eisner, color and lettering were techniques he’d use with extraordinary effectiveness only when The Spirit reached its peak. The combination of those tools, however, gave Eisner what he needed to step away from traditional storytelling entirely. The June 1, 1941, episode (reprinted here on this page) is the first that Eisner told in doggerel poetry, without panels, as his characters literally fight their way across the pages atop and around the lettering. It’s also an excellent example of how Eisner’s fights were becoming distinctive. Jack Kirby would take his own childhood street fighting experience and channel it into some of the most convincing dynamic battles in comics, setting the standard for the mass destruction that would fill super-hero comics, movies, and video games for decades. Eisner’s fights, on the other hand, evoked the choreography of movie stuntmen, gracefully battling each other and, at the same time, inflicting pain on the Spirit more realistically than other cartoonists were willing (or able) to do to their stars. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut would comment, “What Eisner did was to introduce agony.” By the summer of 1941, Eisner was coming in to his own, comfortable with the stage the supplement provided, his cast of characters, and his abilities. The shadow of Europe’s war was coming closer and closer, and on the day that France signed an armistice, laying down its weapons before the Germans in preparation for a more formal surrender, Eisner fired his first shot: the tale of Hitler’s secret fact-finding visit to America and his encounter with the Spirit (reprinted here on this page). Charlie Chaplin had taken on the Great Dictator first, so satirizing Hitler wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was a clear sign of Eisner’s increased confidence and his willingness to break the original detective-

story boundaries of the strip.

Next eight images: “Self Portrait,” The Spirit no. 101, May 3, 1942. Eisner and his hero began to playfully relate to each other early on. The inking of this page is credited to Lou Fine.













Detail, “The Kissing Caper,” The Spirit no. 306, April 7, 1946.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the even greater heights that Eisner would hit with The Spirit after the war, it would be easy to look at the year’s worth of material he produced between the summer of 1941 and his induction into the army in May 1942 as a legendary period. The first of the architecturally brilliant splashes comes in this stretch (with the Spirit standing atop his own logo, in the form of the buildings of a Middle Eastern bazaar), opening a story that the legendary Jules Feiffer picked for his book The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965). Feiffer, who would work for Eisner on The Spirit for several years after the war, knew the oeuvre well and selected this story to reintroduce Eisner to the world when he felt his mentor wasn’t getting the attention he deserved. In this period, Eisner also began to intrude on his own creation’s reality. He broke down what’s called “the fourth wall,” or at least peeked through it, in the November 9, 1941, episode, when he responded to the Spirit’s submission of a case by telling him it was “utterly impossible and fantastic.” And then, in the May 3, 1942, story reprinted here on this page, Eisner becomes a character, and the Spirit points out that his artwork is improving. The Spirit had never been more right. The success of The Spirit also brought about an extension of the hero’s reach. The syndicate launched a daily newspaper strip in October 1941, which further stretched the studio’s resources but also enabled more readers to encounter the characters. The structural challenges of doing an adventure strip in the small space the papers allowed a daily didn’t hold Eisner’s attention, and after the first few weeks he left most of the work on it to others. If he disliked working in an even smaller space, it was partially because his vision was already larger. The Philadelphia Record was one of the original papers carrying the new strip, and it publicized the daily’s launch with a long article. The Record reported, “The comic strip, [Eisner] explains, is no longer a comic strip, but in reality an illustrated novel. It is new and raw in form just now, but material for limitless intelligent development. And eventually and inevitably it will be a legitimate medium for the best of writers and artists.” In terms Eisner would appreciate, the statement was an act of chutzpah, unprecedented by any similar declaration from newspaper strip or comic book cartoonists. In ways Eisner could not possibly have foreseen, he would play a key role in making it come true.

Eisner at war (second from left), c. 1942–43. Military officers in Aberdeen, Maryland, reviewing cartoon training pieces were only slightly different from Tudor City studio artists looking at The Spirit in progress.

But first another cartoon character had plans for Eisner: Uncle Sam called, and in that very month, Eisner left to serve. IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS BOOK, there’s little to be said about The Spirit during Eisner’s war years. After a few weeks trying to write scripts at night during basic training, Eisner realized that he wouldn’t be able to continue. Busy Arnold stepped in, as arranged, and the supplement’s production was shifted to Connecticut under his general direction. A battalion of talented people worked on the series, including writers who were solid masters of comics and other forms, such as Manly Wade Wellman (who made his reputation in science fiction) and Bill Woolfolk (who had written comics and would go on to television in the next decade), and the brilliant artist Lou Fine (who had served in the Eisner and Iger shop and the Tudor City studio). They would keep the supplement going and even do better work than what appeared in most contemporary comic books. But it is Eisner’s life and work, and its significance to the graphic novel, that we’re going to follow. EISNER VACILLATED BETWEEN efforts to be classified a journalist (and avoid combat) and a desire to go to war that was fanned by his basic training. But no sooner was he out of basic than he found two men standing over his bunk, asking if he wanted to do a comic strip for the base newspaper, The Flaming Bomb. His work on Private Dogtag, about an inept private, led Eisner to an insight. He won the opportunity to do a poster promoting “preventative maintenance” of weapons and equipment, and when he understood the depth of the problem, Eisner came up with a way to help, using his art to explain the complex tasks simply. He innately knew how to communicate with the army of new draftees and break down the necessary maintenance tasks into manageable steps. Eisner was sent to the newly built Pentagon to work on Army Motors, a crude, mimeographed publication aiming to cope with the overwhelming challenge of getting millions of men to work with the technology of war when only about one quarter of the people in the United States even owned a car. The star of Private Dogtag swiftly morphed into Joe Dope and was joined by a cast of colorful supporting characters. The assignment played to Eisner’s strengths in new ways. As Jules Feiffer would later describe him, Eisner was “less an artist, even though he was very much an artist, than a researcher and a technician,” and

he had an innate “curiosity about how you do things.” It wasn’t simply an assignment; it was a chance to investigate different ways to use his skills. Many of Eisner’s fellow comics writers and artists were called on to put their talents to work on propaganda or communications for the war effort, but only Eisner created a tool that the military still uses in recognizable form almost seventy years later—illustrations that are as useful in the era of drones as they were when the latest military innovation was the jeep. The effectiveness of his comics and cartoons was tested by the University of Chicago and found to be strong, so soon Eisner was balancing Army Motors, a civilian-supported companion project called Firepower, and illustrations for technical manuals. He was broadening his creative skills beyond the traditional comic book, and his business skills beyond interacting with that narrow world as well. Chief Warrant Officer William Eisner was being trained for a new kind of combat for when the war was over, even if he didn’t fully realize it.

Eisner’s official army portrait, 1943. His rank of Chief Warrant Officer placed him above enlisted men but below the regular officer corps. The rank was typically used during World War II for soldiers in specialty occupations.

Detail, original art for the cover of The Spirit no. 26, 1980. Eisner almost always did new covers for the Kitchen Sink Press reprints of his early stories, using a looser and more refined technique that had developed as he matured.

A WILL EISNER HAD GONE away a young man who had done work well beyond his peers and showed great promise. He returned from the army, and while the G.I. Bill created many opportunities for the World War II vets, Eisner’s choices in life were limited by his commitments. As his widow, Ann, recalled recently, “Will was always a responsible person,” and rather than run off to study at the Sorbonne or some other destination, he needed to provide for his parents. So Eisner took back the reins from Busy Arnold without debate, rented offices at 37 Wall Street (where he’d sold newspapers as a boy), and swung back into action. There were a variety of laws protecting returning G.I.s’ rights to get back jobs that they’d given up for the duration, but it was Eisner’s own talent that was his strongest guarantee. No one could possibly do The Spirit as well, and a number of brilliant cartoonists had proven that during the war. Some adjustments in the team were needed (most notably with John Spranger coming in to do tight pencils from Eisner’s layouts). The section was shorter now (with The Spirit seven pages instead of eight), the daily strip had run its course (having ended on March 11, 1944), and Eisner himself more focused. The first episode to come off his board was, suitably, a celebration. Picking up on a tradition he had established in 1940, Eisner greeted his

readers as they were gathering for the holidays with an annual episode to celebrate the human spirit. On Christmas Eve, Denny Colt left watch over the city to Santa Claus and the magic of a holiday tradition that wasn’t Eisner’s own. Eisner had reason to celebrate, too; not only had he come through the war without being fired upon, but The Spirit was near its peak as a business, with some five million copies being delivered to the twenty or so papers that carried it. Eisner was back in his city and ready to go. There was one other staff change, which didn’t appear important at first. A sixteen-year-old came knocking on the studio door, carrying a portfolio that Eisner found unimpressive. But the kid knew more about Eisner’s work than the artist himself could recall, and he was willing to do anything. So Eisner let Jules Feiffer through the door to become an assistant, even if initially he wasn’t allowed (or qualified) to do much. Above and next: Selected panels from “The Origin of the Spirit,” The Spirit no. 1, June 2, 1940. There’s raw passion in Eisner’s initial telling of the Spirit’s origin story, but compare it to the 1946 version on the following pages.