The Leonardo of Sequential Art (Will Eisner in general)

Name: mcrouch

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Product:	Will Eisner in general
Date:	10/07/01 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easily accessible stories, wide range of contemporary themes, can be appreciated by all ages

Disadvantages: don't be put off by picture strips - images are a language too

Where do you start writing about someone like Will Eisner? Well, he was born in 1917, studied painting and anatomy before finding his vocation as a cartoonist during the Depression era days of 1930s America. As well as working as a publisher, advertiser and illustrator, he also created THE SPIRIT, a weekly newspaper comic book insert. By 1952 he was specialising in educational comics. He spent 20 years producing technical manuals using the comic book form that were successfully published by the United States Army. In the 1970s he returned to comics 'proper' and produced what is widely regarded as the first of the modern era graphic novels, A CONTRACT WITH GOD. He has followed this with many more as well as writing two influential books about the medium, COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART and GRAPHIC STORYTELLING. Now into his eighties, Will Eisner continues to write, draw and teach. I cannot possibly write in depth about every book he has ever published but I will try to give you a flavour of his work.

His first graphic novel, A CONTRACT WITH GOD, is a series of tales set in a tenement block in 1930s New York City, a recurring setting for many of his stories. The title story is about a down-on-his-luck Jewish man who writes up a contract with God only for God to violate that contract. The story deals essentially with this man's world-view, his perception of his life and his apparent crisis of faith. Another tale is about Scuggs, the tenement Superintendent, a brutish, heavily built man whom everyone tries to avoid. His only friend in the world is his dog. Alone in his apartment every night, he gets drunk surrounded by his bare walls covered only by calendar girl pictures. One day a pretty young girl drops by and makes friends before charging Scuggs a nickel to take a peek up her skirt. She then playfully feeds candy to the dog. However, this pretty little child has poisoned the candy and the dog dies. She then claims assault and in a mom
ent of madness at the loss of his dog, he gives chase. Naturally the neighbours assume he is a thug attacking a ten-year-old girl and call the police. Scuggs, unable to live with the injustice against him, shoots himself. This is a kind of Beauty and the Beast parable in which the beauty isn't quite so beautiful and the beast is not quite so bad.

Eisner has written several books of this sort, collections of short stories tied into a central theme or framework. These include INVISIBLE PEOPLE and MINOR MIRACLES. He also produced several series of vignettes, very short observational pieces on life and people including THE CITY PEOPLE NOTEBOOK and New York: THE BIG CITY.

I haven't said much yet about Will Eisner's artistic style so let's take a look at that. Most of his work is done in black and white, or sepia. He has a sometimes sketchy, deceptively simple cartoon style that somehow manages to capture life in all its variety. Some of his street scenes are as richly detailed as any photograph. And his people are real people coming in all shapes and sizes, not all supermodels like many comic people.

Eisner's main preoccupation in his art is in trying to convey a sense of time, motion and continuity. A simple device such as a tap drip-drip-dripping over a kitchen sink can extend a period of time between just two or three images. He uses visual devices such as this to control the speed at which the stories are read and thus develop the illusion of time. When I say read, I'm not just talking about the words on the page. Eisner marries words and pictures in such a way that it is difficult to read one without the other. The images are a means to an end rather than just being nice images. They are as much a part of the storytelling process as the words themselves. It is this concept which many adults coming back to comics struggle to perceive. This is a difficult concept to adequately put into words but this
kind of visual storytelling technique is one of the great artistic devices unique to comics.

Eisner has authored a number of longer novel-length books, often semi-autobiographical and dealing with recurring themes such as anti-Semitism. He has a particular interest in the make up and workings of ordinary society. One such book is DROPSIE AVENUE: THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. Here the central theme or character is the tenement block itself. We begin with its birth from a huddle of shacks in a field outside the city to its growth as a housing block in the suburbs. We witness its decline and decay and eventually, its destruction. Yet all the time, as with all of Eisner's stories, it is the people, the human element that is important. Over the course of a century or so, we watch people come and go through the story, witnessing the highs and lows of their lives and the effects that one generation can have upon the next. The book is also about 'belonging'. As Eisner himself puts it, "Residency defined you as surely as did national origin and gave you a lifelong membership of a fraternity held together by memories".

My personal favourite of all of Will Eisner's work, and one of his most powerful stories, is TO THE HEART OF THE STORM. I don't think I can explain it any better than the back cover blurb that calls this "an autobiographical novel that examines how the anti-Semitism a youth experiences in the America of the 1920s and '30s shapes his personality and life. This graphic novel is also a touching family history, told through flashbacks as the young man rides a troop train to basic training immediately after the entry of the United States into World War II. Poignant yet tough, uncompromising yet humorous, TO THE HEART OF THE STORM captures a turbulent era in American history when the country was inexorably marching toward war, carrying along all its ethnic, racial and religious misunderstandings".
<
br>When I took up A Level English Literature a few years back, I had a teacher who was scornful of comics. He, like so many, viewed them as insubstantial, juvenile and illiterate. He reconsidered his opinion after reading TO THE HEART OF THE STORM and while not entirely won over, admitted that some comics had the potential for greater depth and meaning. I can give this book no higher accolade than that.

Eisner, even in his eighties, continues to expand his repertoire, his themes and artistic styles, continually experimenting and pushing his own limits. He has done more than any other in promoting comics as a legitimate art form. He is a man entirely in love with his medium. In recent years he has published a collection of stories based on his own war experiences called LAST DAY IN VIETNAM. He has dealt with family relationships, age, incest and abuse in A FAMILY MATTER. He has also written about the possible consequences of humanity making first contact with an unseen, far-off alien culture in LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET. Aside from many other works, he has recently produced his first works in colour with AN INTRODUCTION TO DON QUIXOTE and AN INTRODUCTION TO MOBY DICK.

I won't pretend that comics can compete with the depths of the literary novel. And yes, often they are little more than mere popcorn entertainment. Yet Will Eisner has shown, and continues to prove, that the comics' medium can deal with subtext, depth and emotional resonance in a thoughtful and intelligent way. My personal recommendations to newcomers would be A CONTRACT WITH GOD, A LIFE FORCE, DROPSIE AVENUE and TO THE HEART OF THE STORM.

I really do hope that at least some of you will be inspired to go out and try a copy of one of these books. Will Eisner is such a master storyteller within his medium that his work doesn't deserve to be restricted to just a few literary-liberated, comic-buying adults. Go out and expand your horizons and put away any pr
econceptions about what comics are - with Will Eisner at the helm, I don't believe you'll regret it.

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