Eisner

Copyright © 2015. Abrams ComicArts. All rights reserved.
May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
INTRODUCTION
IT’S ONE OF MY GREATEST professional regrets. be separated. As you’ll see, Eisner wasn’t just a that had evaded comics for so long: credibility.
It was a local event. It wasn’t far from my house. participant in that history. He was a builder, a I still remember reading A Contract with God all
And here was the offer: They wanted me to come finely trained mason laying the cornerstones that those years ago. I grew up in a crappy apartment
give a talk with a man named Will Eisner. became our industry’s foundation. building in Brooklyn. Eisner’s was in the Bronx.
There it was: One time only. Me and Will To the general public, he’s famous for giving In my far-too-egotistical young eyes, that made us
Eisner. Together onstage (or at least together at a us the term “graphic novel.” Let me just say it: To generational brethren. And then as I began to read,
local library). me, that’s not Eisner’s legacy. These days, the term well . . . in those pages, and in so many more, I
I passed. itself is more often co-opted and used to put so- saw his ability to— Actually, I’ll let this book do
Don’t look at me like that. I promise I had called serious work up on a cultural pedestal, while its job and show you what Eisner really built.
a good reason (though for the life of me, I can’t ghettoizing the more mainstream comic book and Thanks to Paul Levitz, we now have a truly
remember what it was). A conflicting event? A super hero portion of our industry. There’s nothing definitive overview of Eisner’s forceful and instru-
Little League game for my son? The more time gained by snobbishly ignoring one’s own culture, mental work. So as you turn the pages and things
passes, the more elaborate my excuse blooms in my and I truly believe Will Eisner would never stand look familiar, just remember, Eisner’s the one who
memory. These days, I think I was helping rescue for that. Don’t forget, this is the man who would did it first. All I can say is, his commitment to the
starving orphans from a flaming blimp that was proudly sit onstage as the Eisner Awards were given craft is the reason I get to sit here today. His work
about to Hindenburg in downtown Miami. out in his name. And during the first year of those influenced me and influenced nearly every comic
The point is, I didn’t do the event with Eisner. awards, the big winners weren’t just Watchmen or book creator I draw influence from.
Whatever was going on, I figured I’d have another the folks who pride themselves on their New Yorker As for my Will Eisner meeting, I learned my
chance. Soon after, in January 2005, Will Eisner covers. They were Steve Rude’s Nexus, a Gumby lesson. A few years later, I did a treasured event
died. I found out he lived less than a half hour comic, and even a Space Ghost one. Eisner stood— with artist Jerry Robinson (creator of the Joker
from me. and still stands—for it all. and Robin, the Boy Wonder); got to know Joanne
I know. You don’t have to say it. Read the first In my eyes, Eisner’s legacy wasn’t that he was Siegel (widow of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel);
sentence again: It’s one of my greatest professional one of the first to create “serious” comics. It’s that and have picked the brains of Stan Lee and so
regrets. I mean it. It haunts me. Regularly. And yes, he was one of the first to show the world that many other of my heroes, including the author
applicable copyright law.
that story is all about me. But it’s also all about the comics should be taken seriously. of this book.
legacy of Will Eisner. Indeed, throughout his life, he became the When I was growing up in Brooklyn, one of the
To this day, the reason my regret guts me so ambassador of exactly that. He was the one we comic book stores I used to go to (I found out years
deeply is because I was well aware of Eisner’s place would hold up, pointing with pride at books such later) had an employee named Dan DiDio (currently
in comic book history. In many ways, the two can’t as A Contract with God, praying for the one thing the co-publisher of DC Comics). When Dan was
EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 6/20/2021 3:10 PM via COLUMBIA STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
AN: 1097096 ; Levitz, Paul, Eisner, Will, Meltzer, Brad.; Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel
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Copyright © 2015. Abrams ComicArts. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
younger, he used to go to a comics store that had an

employee named Paul Levitz (the former president
and publisher of DC Comics). Sometimes we have
no idea just how intertwined our histories can be.
Here’s the proof: Decades later, it was Paul Lev-
itz who okayed a storyline I wrote for DiDio that
eventually led to my winning . . . what else? The
Will Eisner Award (Best Single Issue 2008—Justice
League of America no. 11).
To this day, it’s the only award I keep on display.
It means everything to me. Not for the win. But for
who it represents and the gifts he gave us.
— BRAD MELTZER
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
October 2014
Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The

Inner Circle, The Book of Fate, and seven other bestselling thrillers.
He is one of a handful of authors to have books on multiple
bestseller lists: nonfiction (History Decoded ), advice (Heroes for
My Son and Heroes for My Daughter), children’s books (I Am
Amelia Earhart and I Am Abraham Lincoln), and even graphic
novels (Identity Crisis and Justice League of America). He is also the
host of the History Channel television show Decoded, as well as Lost
History. You can find him at BradMeltzer.com and @bradmeltzer.
PAGE 1
Detail, splash page from “Self Portrait,” The Spirit
no. 101, May 3, 1942.
PAGES 2 AND 218–21

Will Eisner in his studio in Tamarac, Florida, May 2001,
photographed by Greg Preston for his book, The Artist
Within: Portraits of Cartoonists, Comic Book Artists,
Animators, and Others, Dark Horse Books, 2007.
PAGE 4
Detail, original art for the cover of A Contract With God,
Kitchen Sink Press, 1985.
PAGE 5
Detail, A Contract With God, 1978.
PAGES 6–7
Detail, original art for an interior page of New York:
The Big City, 1986.
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PREFACE
IF THERE’S A FORM revolutionizing popular
culture today, it’s comics—and in particular,
comics in the form of the graphic novel. Providing
the cutting edge for success in movies, on television,
in print—as textbooks, e-books, and online—and
even invading such avant-garde spaces as the theater,
comics and graphic novels are rewriting the rules
for creativity. Disdained a generation ago as enter-
tainment for illiterate children and future juvenile
delinquents, comics have captured our imagination
and earned the respect of critics and academics the
world over. But a little more than seventy years ago,
one cartoonist—and only one—said that comics
were “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.” His name was Will
Eisner, and more than any other single creator in his
field, he made the legitimacy of comics happen.
As a writer, artist, entrepreneur, educator, and
businessman, Eisner made crucial contributions to
the medium he loved over a seventy-year period, and
his influence has continued to shape the field in the

years since his death in 2005. The range of his roles
was pivotal to his influence: Eisner’s artistic peers
were notoriously poor at managing their business
activities and primarily served as cautionary tales in
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PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT

Spot art from Eisner’s preface to A Contract with God
and Other Tenement Stories, Baronet Press, 1978.
PREVIOUS PAGES, RIGHT

Original art for the back cover of A Contract with God,
Kitchen Sink Press, 1985.
OPPOSITE
Original art for the cover of The Buyer’s Guide for Comic
Fandom, 1974.
RIGHT
Detail, “The Last Hero,” unpublished Spirit story, 1996.
how not to be well rewarded for creative triumphs. This book does not attempt to chronicle his personal crossed in many ways. In interviewing Jules Feiffer
Perhaps that multidimensional talent came at a life, or to provide a comprehensive look at the for this book, I discovered how many friends we
price for Eisner. The two cartoonists most frequently thousands of pages of artwork he created over seven had in common from when we were each sixteen
regarded as his peers had a wider direct influence as decades. Much of his work is in print, and little of it and breaking into comics, Jules at Eisner’s studio
artists on popular culture: Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD can be described as unexamined. Eisner’s art speaks in the late 1940s, and me at DC Comics in the
helped define the humor of America and usher in an for itself. Its beauty, and the personalities that early 1970s. Jules knew Eisner and so many others
era of sharp skepticism; and Jack Kirby’s dynamic spring to life in it, quite literally tell their own tales. early in their careers, while I knew them in their
artwork has shaped the visual sensibilities of films, Besides the emblematic choices, the pieces included later days. Many of us came to share Eisner’s belief
television, and video games far beyond the literal here are long unseen or were last published in col- that comics were an art form; none of us shared
adaptations of the super heroes he co-created for lections when Eisner had barely begun the graphic his lifelong, dogged pursuit of making that belief a
Marvel Comics. But of the founding generation, novels that were the triumphant last act of his long recognized fact.
it was Eisner who, in the English-speaking world, and celebrated career. Despite all the documentation and analysis, we
most shaped comics into a recognized art form. Eisner is sometimes referred to as the “father still lack a solid, single-volume overview of the career
Will Eisner’s life has been well documented, of the graphic novel,” but it is fairer to see his and work of this innovative creator. There needs to
not least by Eisner himself. Directly in his graphic life’s work as a quest to champion the respect and be a book that places Eisner’s work in the context of
novel The Dreamer, and indirectly in his other tales, recognition of comics as a legitimate art form in its times and makes an argument for why he was of
he told a version of his youth in the early days of America—a quest that was ultimately fulfilled singular importance, particularly in the evolution of
comics, and of life in the tenements of New York through the creation of the graphic novel format. the graphic novel, which we can now safely consider
City. The interviews he gave have been published Though that journey took many turns, and Eisner’s one of the most creative and exciting contributions
extensively, and even more unusually, the interviews approach was uniquely multifaceted, he lived to see of pop culture. That is the task of this book. Exactly,
he conducted with other cartoonists are in print to his goal accomplished. I hope, as Will Eisner would have wanted.
illuminate their commonalities and differences I lived through this journey with Eisner. First as
(including a book-length discussion with Frank Miller, a comics fan, interviewing him for an early fan-
revealing agreements and disagreements between top zine. Then as a writer and editor for DC Comics, — PAUL LEVITZ
New York City
talents of two very separate generations). Eisner is using skills often gleaned from his work. Finally
August 2013
the subject of many articles, two biographies, two as publisher of DC, having the opportunity to
documentaries, and innumerable scholarly papers. publish his work and become his friend. Our lives
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THE IMAGES THAT WILL EISNER spent a ended up as the champion of an emerging creative
lifetime illuminating were burned into his eyes form that would change popular culture. All quite
when he first opened them: the teeming life of unimaginable when he first opened his eyes.
immigrant New York City in the years between Eisner’s father, Shmuel (or Sam, when Ameri-
the two World Wars. While Eisner’s brush would canized), had been born in Kollmei near Vienna
sweep over alien landscapes, military battlefields, and moved to that city as an adolescent and ap-
and even effete pursuits such as tennis, it would prenticed with a muralist. They painted frescoes
never seem as at home as when shading the crum- in the wet plaster of churches or for prosperous
bling wall of a tenement or capturing the shadowy homes of the Viennese. The Jews of Vienna were
folds of laundry dangling on a makeshift line and a largely assimilated minority, mostly working-
dripping onto the street below. Eisner became class tradesmen and shopkeepers—generally a
the cartoonist laureate of the Jewish immigrant more comfortable group than those in the Russian
experience, leaving those slums behind but taking Empire to the east. However relatively comfortable,
their joys with him, seeing their many challenges Sam followed other family members to America
through a lens that found the humor and optimism in search of a better life. He settled in New York
within. And despite the obstacles surrounding a City, finding work painting scenery for vaudeville
young man coming of age in the heart of the Great and the then-thriving Yiddish theater . . . and
Depression, Eisner told his stories to millions and with an introduction from relatives, marrying a
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14 | WILL EISNER CHAMPION OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL
PREVIOUS PAGES
“At the ‘Forgotten’ Ghetto,” the Clinton News (DeWitt
Clinton High School in the Bronx), December 8, 1933.
Eisner’s first published cartoon, at age sixteen.
RIGHT
William Erwin Eisner, age one, 1918.
distant cousin named Fannie Ingber, who had the to sell furniture. When that failed, he joined a ven- Eisner took the disrespect personally, not
unusual start of being born on the ship bringing ture making fur coats, until that business, too, went simply as the tribal matter it so often was on New
her mother over from Romania. under. The family lived in Manhattan, in New Jersey, York streets (with gangs united by their ethnicity
William Erwin Eisner came along on March 6, in Brooklyn, and ultimately in the Bronx, which claiming territory by the block and patrolling their
1917, sharing his birthday with his father; his brother, Will’s memories would always call home. invisible borders). He would recapture the moment
Julian, arrived four years later; and a sister, Rhoda, Memories of the Bronx weren’t all sweet ones. sixty years later in To the Heart of the Storm, and
eight years after that. The family, like so many im- A particularly vivid moment was an after-school he would carry his personal fight against anti-
migrants of the time, lived on the tenuous edge of the confrontation for a very young Eisner, still called Semitism through his entire life. His final work,
city’s economy, moving from place to place as work “Billy,” and his even younger brother, Julian. Neigh- The Plot (published posthumously), was a graphic
(and landlords) permitted, sometimes changing apart- borhood bullies accosted them for not being Catho- exposé of the virulent screed The Protocols of the
ments monthly. They moved often enough, in fact, lic and turned Julian’s name into an anti-Semitic Elders of Zion. Whether fighting for his family, his
that Eisner himself wasn’t sure where he’d been born, taunt, “Jew-lian, Jew-lian. A sissy name.” One street tribe, or his chosen medium, respect was always a
though Williamsburg seemed a likely possibility. Sam fight later, a roughed-up Billy brought his brother critical goal for Eisner.
painted homes and metal beds, to give the illusion home and announced to him that from now on his By the time the Depression hit, Billy was
that they were wood, and then abandoned his brush name was going to be Pete. not only protecting his brother, he was also an
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Eisner photo album: young Will Eisner

and family, c. 1920.
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important contributor to the family’s stretched

coffers. Eisner found himself selling afternoon news-
papers in front of 37 Wall Street, miles from their
Bronx apartment (and, coincidentally, a build-
ing where years later he would have his offices).
Distressed as the stockbrokers and investors on
the street were, the two cents that Eisner hawked
his papers for put him even further down the
economic ladder. The fringe benefit of the job
was that Eisner got to read the daily and Sunday
comics in many different papers. E. C. Segar’s
Thimble Theatre was a personal favorite. Eisner
looked back on discovering George Herriman’s
Krazy Kat in those papers as well, and spoke of
Segar, Herriman, and, later, Milton Caniff as
having “taught me an awful lot.”
Economic security was a regular topic at the
Eisner table: Billy had started drawing at age seven
or eight on paper when he could and, like other
future great cartoonists of his generation (Jack
Kirby, Shelly Mayer, and Harvey Kurtzman, to
name just three), on the sidewalks of New York
when the paper ran out. In Eisner’s case, he was
often sketching airplanes, notably the Spirit of
St. Louis. Sam encouraged this, proud of his son’s
budding talent, despite the fact that his own life
in art had been, to put it kindly, economically
unstable. Fannie worried about her son’s future
prosperity and tried to persuade him to consider
at least becoming an art teacher. It was a more
dependable, respectable profession . . . with a
pension, even. As Eisner later put it, “My mother
had grave doubts about how I would grow up.”
Biographers have theorized that the dichotomy of
Eisner’s professional life was in part an effort to
satisfy both his parents: create art for his father

and become a businessman to please his mother.
As a young man, however, his critical moment
came via a visit with the Fleischer brothers at their
studio on Broadway. The tour was arranged by a
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OVERTURE | 17
OPPOSITE AND LEFT

Illustrations and cartoon from the Clinton News.
ABOVE
“What Is His Name?,” the Clinton News, 1935. Eisner’s
first published comic strip.
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ABOVE
Art-school sketch, February 2, 1935.
RIGHT
Eisner and one of his paintings. The art is from 1936;
the photo, 1941.
OPPOSITE
Sketch, mid-1930s.
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friend’s brother who was working there as an ani- on Manhattan’s Varick Street, learning some
mator. The Fleischers were making short cartoons of the relevant skills, cleaning presses, and
with synchronized soundtracks, including By the watching everything carefully. His lifelong
Light of the Silvery Moon (1927). Their ground- curiosity was already formed and would soon
breaking work on Betty Boop, Popeye, Gulliver’s serve him well.
Travels, and Superman was still to come, but the Eisner also became interested in the theater
magic of making a living drawing crystallized into at Clinton, working with Adolph Green (later
reality for the eight-year-old Eisner, and he decided a seven-time Tony Award–winning lyricist) on
illustration was going to be his chosen career. class shows, and attending inexpensive theater
Despite his choice, Eisner did not make the de- in New York. The school’s drama club was filled
cision to commute to one of New York City’s new with energy from other young Jewish immigrant
specialized high schools—the School of Industrial kids as well, with Eisner’s time there overlapping
Art or the High School of Music & Art—where with future actors Alan Arbus and Martin Balsam.
many of his fellow first-generation comic book Movies, on long Saturday afternoons in the dark-
artists would go. Eisner stuck to his local high ened “palaces” of the Bronx, were, as he later put
school instead but had the good fortune that it it, “the drug for all of us.” He would later single
was DeWitt Clinton High School, which had out the experimental films of Man Ray, which he
just relocated to a twenty-one-acre Bronx campus watched at the New School long after their release,
in an area rapidly expanding from the extension as a particular fascination. Pulps, such as copies of
of the IRT elevated trains. The school had an Black Mask Detective slipped to him by a neighbor,
extremely large and diverse population, with new rounded out the trifecta of cultural influences.
immigrant families filling the apartment buildings Eisner found his joy in story, not in the particular
clustered under and near the rattling tracks and medium in which it was delivered or (if there is
sending their boys under the new law that made such a thing) its level of artistic class or merit.
high school education compulsory in New York City. Although the production work for the school
His high school years were extraordinarily shows absorbed Eisner, and he would consider
formative for Eisner, giving him not only his becoming a set designer following his father’s
first taste of being published, but also of being work in the theater, other forms of art had greater
a publisher. Eisner recalled teacher Ray Phillip- allure. He’d attend lectures and courses offered by
son in particular and was still in touch with him the WPA (Works Progress Administration, a New
four decades later. Phillipson ran the journalism Deal federal agency set up to counter some of the
program, including the school paper, the Clinton Depression’s effects) or get scholarships to the Art
News, which published Eisner’s first comic strip. Students League (arranged in part by attracting
With fellow student Ken Giniger (a future book other, paying students) and use them to study
publisher himself ), Eisner started an underground with legendary teachers such as George Bridg-
literary journal called The Hound and the Horn, man (a master of anatomy who wrote the defini-
full of poetry, erotica, and illustrations that he tive textbooks for life drawing). Eisner not only
made as woodcut engravings (a more economical learned the subjects; he also learned to appreciate
form than preparing drawings for print in those the power of teaching.
days). Eisner worked briefly at Bronfman Printing While teachers at Clinton and elsewhere
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were inspirations for Eisner, fellow students

were important as well. Bob Kahn (who would
change his name to Kane and collaborate with
yet another Clintonian, Bill Finger, to co-create
Batman a few years later) soon opened a vital
door for him.
Leaving Clinton without a diploma in hand
because of a failed geometry class, Eisner entered
the workforce at a time when unemployment was
still over 20 percent, and no doubt to his mother,
at least, his plan to support himself as an artist
was impractical and unrealistic. But, as Eisner
recalled, “What turned me on, really, was the idea
of print . . . there’s a permanence to it. There’s
an intimacy in reading.” His search for a suitable
publication for his art led him to a night-shift
job at the New York American, Hearst’s morning
paper for the city. Eisner would assemble small
ads in the wee hours, writing copy, doing an
occasional illustration, and even doing what he’d
described as “atrocious lettering.”
Trading up to Eve, a new magazine for Jewish
women, Eisner got the lofty title of art director
. . . and was fired fairly quickly when it became
clear that his willingness to work at the low sal-
ary was an indication of his lack of fit with their
subject matter in addition to his general inex-
perience. It was the last time Eisner would have
a job working for someone else; he wasn’t yet
twenty years old.
Eisner returned to looking for work and
Eisner inking The Spirit dailies, 1941. trying to sell his art, one cartoon or draw-
ing at a time. The big magazines that bought
cartoons wouldn’t buy any of his, and even
fashion illustration was a nonstarter. But Bob
Kahn—now Kane—had made some sales where

Eisner couldn’t and mentioned an opportunity.
He’d sold some work to Wow, What a Magazine!
Eisner had a new door to knock on, and it would
lead to the rest of his life.
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OVERTURE | 21
Panels from the detective strip Harry Carey!, 1935.

Possibly Eisner’s first introduction of a continuing
character, these sample comic strips were created
while at DeWitt Clinton High School to pitch to
syndicates. In 1936, Eisner renamed the strip Harry
Karry, and it appeared in the comic book anthology
Wow, What a Magazine!
WOW! WAS A SHORT-LIVED venture, destined a skill from his time working in the printing plant. that had begun three years before with Famous
to last only four issues in 1936. Its most mean- On their way out, Iger offered him a production Funnies. Most of the content was still reprints of
ingful contribution to comics was the meeting of job, and when Eisner pressed him instead for the newspaper comic strips, without even being refor-
Eisner and Samuel M. (“Jerry”) Iger, nominally opportunity to do comics, he gave the young artist matted significantly. But like Wow!, many comic
the magazine’s editor but functionally the entire a shot. Eisner was a comic book artist at last, writ- books were starting to include new material, since
staff for the owner, John Henle, a garment manu- ing and illustrating Harry Karry (a detective strip), the best strips were already committed elsewhere
facturer toying for a moment with publishing. In a The Flame (a pirate adventure), and other forgetta- or were simply too expensive for the entrepreneurs,
tale Eisner retold in interviews and in his graphic ble features. But the experience was unforgettable, who, like Henle, were mostly small businessmen
novel The Dreamer, he went to show his portfolio with Eisner’s artwork even decorating an issue that sensing a (literally) colorful opportunity. And
to Iger and was dragged along on a walk to the included some of Segar’s Thimble Theatre strips, many, also like Henle, would end up owing their
engraver, where Iger needed to deal with a crisis. providing validation by proximity. contributors money when the publications folded.
Wow! ’s engravings included a botched Benday Wow! faded out of existence quickly; it was a Eisner approached Iger with an idea over
screen (a method of adding tone to line drawings), tumultuous time in the evolution of comic books, lunch: There was a growing need for original
and Eisner grabbed a burnishing tool and fixed it— with publishers jumping in to explore the format comics material for these new publishers, and the
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LEFT
Okay Comics Weekly no. 2, October 23, 1937. Eisner
doing a credible imitation of Milton Caniff to supply a
cover for a British weekly running reprints of Terry and
the Pirates.
ABOVE
Wags no. 25, 1937. Eisner using a lighter cartoon style for
the cover of an international weekly tabloid.
OPPOSITE
Okay Comics Weekly no. 11, January 22, 1938. Eisner
channeling Ham Fisher doing Joe Palooka for Eisner and
Iger’s Editors Press Service.
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publishers lacked editors, much less writers and drum of his life: He wanted to be an artist, but And it was a disproportionately male preserve.
artists, who could supply it. If they combined it was a life full of instability, as his mother had These were young men who were getting to draw
Iger’s hustling sales skill with Eisner’s ability to drilled into him since he began drawing. But if he for a living at a time when the alternatives were
create the material, he speculated, there was a was a businessman producing art, he could have factory work or the garment sweatshops that per-
business to be built. Iger was broke, but Eisner his stability and get to do what he loved. It was a vaded New York City. The hours were long, but
fronted the money they needed and therefore respectable solution. That realization, also before his the modest pay was steady (at least compared to
he got his name first on Eisner and Iger, Ltd. It twentieth birthday, served to guide him through the vagaries of being an artist), as long as the team
may not have been the first of the comic book the next five decades of his life. included someone who could sell their services
“shops” or packagers (Harry “A” Chesler may have The shop structure was a simple but innovative to publishers. Iger did that well, connecting with
already opened), but the concept was new enough application of mass production to art: Divide the clients who wanted to be in the comics business
that Eisner probably developed it independently. multiple talents that a truly great cartoonist re- without particularly caring what characters or
Either way, it was an act of remarkable business quired into constituent parts, their drawing boards content filled their pages. Then it was up to Eisner
entrepreneurship. An artist without assignments crowded into a small office or apartment. One to deliver on Iger’s promises.
having the confidence to team up with an out-of- man might write scripts, another would rough out
work salesman to produce material for an industry layouts, someone good at architectural rendering —
that was just starting up, filled with financially might tighten up the backgrounds, another would
unstable clients struggling to meet the minimal ink in figures, and the least of the apprentices IN THE BEGINNING, there was no need for
definitions of being publishers. might fill in areas of solid black, erase leftover a roomful of artists. Eisner was his own mass
Yet for Eisner, it was the answer to the conun- pencil lines, and sweep up at the end of the day. production, varying his style and using pseud-
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OVERTURE | 25
onyms so that Iger could sell the publishers on his when he changed his name to Jack Kirby.
stable of artists. One good habit became obvious The collaborative nature of comics has fre-
early on: Eisner made his deadlines, a behavior quently contributed to confusion over credit,
not common among artists in any generation, and particularly with regard to the creation of new
that endeared Eisner and Iger to their clients. The characters. The shop structure only made that
work was varied and even international. Through confusion more likely, as there were no firm
Editors Press Service, Eisner’s old The Flame was boundaries between different people’s roles in
rechristened The Hawk and then Hawks of the Sea the process, and collaborations were likely to be
and ran in Wags, a weekly tabloid in England and unsigned and certainly undocumented. Eisner and
Australia. Another international weekly gave Eis- Iger, Ltd., had its share of those dilemmas, includ-
ner the chance to mimic one of the strip artists he ing one between the partners themselves: Both of
most admired, Milton Caniff, whose Terry and the them would take credit for the creation of Sheena,
Pirates had debuted two years before and was be- Queen of the Jungle for the initial launch of Jumbo
ing reprinted in Okay Comics Weekly, when Eisner Comics (September 1938), a new title the shop
was commissioned to do a matching cover illustra- packaged for Fiction House. Eisner had written
tion for the second issue (October 23, 1937). the script, and Meskin provided the artwork, but
Caniff “had the ability to stage a story so you Iger claimed to have come up with the concept.
followed it,” Eisner recalled, with “a high level of If he had, it would have been an unusual creative
drama,” both qualities that would evolve power- moment in a long career; for Eisner, it would have
fully in Eisner’s own work. Syndication seemed been the first of several enduring characters he OPPOSITE
Original art for Black X, 1939, signed by Willis B. Resnie,
so profitable, the partners even branched out would birth. one of Eisner’s more transparent pseudonyms.
into forming a syndicate of their own. But in A different kind of dispute over the circum- ABOVE
the end, their success came from the work the stances of the birth of Wonder Man lasted far Eisner at work, November 1941.
shop produced. longer than the hero himself. Eisner and Iger’s
Iger kept selling, Eisner kept drawing, and in a short-lived syndicate had rejected one submis-
short time the original two-man office that Eisner’s sion, which was also turned down by syndicate
seed money had paid the rent on was far too small. after syndicate and publisher after publisher. But
Even Eisner’s five pseudonyms couldn’t produce when Superman finally saw print in Action Comics
all the work required, since he still was only one no. 1 in 1938, it redefined the comic book world
man, no matter how hard he worked. Then another and created opportunities for a host of imitators.
of Eisner’s skills manifested: He knew how to pick The line between what was generic to the idea of
talent. At a time when publishers and the other a super hero and what was specific to Superman
shops were seemingly hiring anyone who could was impossible to delineate in those early days,
lift a pencil to fill their pages, an abbreviated list but Eisner and Iger ended up clearly on the wrong
of the important artists who came through Eisner side of it.
and Iger, Ltd., includes Bernard Baily, Nick Cardy, Along with Fiction House, another large
Reed Crandall, Lou Fine, Bob Kane, Mort Meskin, customer of the shop was a new company, Fox
George Tuska, and a wiry little guy named Jacob Publications, named after its owner, Victor Fox, a
Kurtzberg, who drew very fast and with a dynamic former accountant at the publisher of Superman
that would shape more than just the comics field and Action Comics. Fox had been giving Eisner
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A nostalgic look back at Eisner’s early characters,

1974. Eisner’s poster combines the probable but
unprecedented combination of the Spirit and Sheena,
Queen of the Jungle, with less probable appearances
by Uncle Sam and the Hawks of the Sea.
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and Iger a lot of work already, when he came in wanted the best that the shop could produce.
with a very specific request for a look-alike hero Their most successful creation for Quality was
to compete with Superman. The legality of the Blackhawk, the story of a group of international
request wasn’t completely clear to the partners, pilots, perhaps inspired in part by the Lafayette
but both the dubious morality and the potential Escadrille in World War I, and foreshadowing how
consequences were: If Fox pulled its business from the Free French would recruit from other nations
Eisner and Iger, leaving a large debt unpaid, it for their air squadrons in World War II. The series
might be enough to close the firm. Eisner created would be Eisner and Iger’s biggest hit, outlasting
Wonder Man to order. the war, the shop itself, and even Quality, who
Unsurprisingly, Superman publisher Harry sold the character to DC Comics. It would be
Donenfeld sued faster than a speeding bullet . . . in continuous publication until 1968, putting it
and with equally deadly aim. It was possible for in a rarefied list of early comic book properties
cases to move through the courts more quickly that survived from the 1940s to entertain a very
in those days, and Eisner found himself in the different generation. Blackhawk would even be
witness box, being grilled on the circumstances of translated into a brief radio serial in 1950 and its
Wonder Man’s creation. As Eisner told the tale in own movie serial from Columbia in 1952 starring
The Dreamer, he refused to defend Fox and accept- Kirk Alyn.
ed the consequences. Several years after Eisner’s Blackhawk also inspired the longest-running
death, however, trial transcripts were uncovered discussion over credits to emerge from the Eisner
in the National Archives by Warner Bros. attorney and Iger studio. Artist Chuck Cuidera, who
Wayne Smith, a lifelong comics fan doing research drew the series for many years and had worked
on Captain Marvel, another hero who attracted on the first installment with writer Bob Powell,
ire and litigation from Superman’s publishers. The sparred with Eisner for decades thereafter over
transcripts told a different tale: Eisner had denied their claims of creator credit. The two men were
the Superman connection and tried to protect Fox. finally brought together on a panel at Comic-Con
Regardless, Fox lost the suit and dropped Eisner International in 1999, and Eisner conceded that
and Iger, stiffing them on his bills. Cuidera was the one who “made something impor-
These transcripts, found after Eisner’s death, tant out of it” and deserved the credit . . . but it
were discovered too late for Eisner to clear up continued to nag at Cuidera.
whether his usually excellent memory had failed Looking back from that distance, though, it
him or whether the embarrassment of the moment was clear that the most important thing to arise
had led him to fudge the details in his retelling. out of the shop’s relationship with Quality was the
In any case, the youthful transgression under connection between Eisner and Arnold. Creative
pressure proved very unlike the consistent morality business packagers are intrinsically built on thin
demonstrated by Eisner throughout the rest of margins, and although the partners had prospered,
his days. Eisner was ready for something more. Arnold

The third-largest customer of Eisner and would bring him that opportunity—and it was
Iger, Ltd., had a different attitude, from its name one that would make him a legend.
through its practices. Quality Comics wanted to
Eisner writing, November 1941. be just that, and owner Everett “Busy” Arnold
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WHEN YOU PICK UP YOUR Sunday newspaper, sections and the booming sales figures for comic
even if it’s not as thick as it was a generation ago, books, saw an opportunity in combining the ideas.
it still probably includes sections that have never Martin approached Arnold, and, in late 1939, the
gone near the paper’s editorial department or print- publisher turned to his most talented and reliable
ing presses. Those entire sections of coupons and supplier of creative material: Will Eisner. Martin
advertising promotion called FSIs (freestanding could sell the distribution deals that would bring
inserts) are delivered complete to the local news- in the revenue; Arnold could organize printing
paper (most often through News America Market- and logistics; and Eisner could fill the pages. The
ing), as is Parade magazine (packaged and printed newspapers would receive printed, bundled copies
by Advance Publications) and a variety of adverto- early enough each week to be inserted into their
rial or specialized sections. The idea (in America, Sunday papers.
anyway) goes back to 1935 and a magazine-format The negotiations were complex, since there
supplement entitled This Week, which peaked at hadn’t been a project quite like this before, but
a circulation surpassing forty million copies and perhaps the most amazing aspect was that there
lasted for more than thirty years. was any negotiation at all. The contracts that
Busy Arnold had an acquaintance at the Des newspaper syndicates gave their cartoonists for
Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate, a sales new strips were very one-sided, and if there was
representative named Henry Martin, who wanted any negotiation, it was about the amount of
to develop a sixteen-page Sunday supplement of money that would be paid to the cartoonist upon
original comics material. Presumably Martin was delivery of his work. Many of the comic book
aware of the four-year-old This Week and, look- publishers that had sprung up didn’t bother with
ing at newspapers’ use of their own comic strip contracts at all or worked with brief assignments
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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.
But Eisner discovered his skill in creative prob-
lem solving extended to business negotiations as
well. Of his peers in the comic book world, only
Joe Simon had demonstrated any skill at negotia-
tion, 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 com-
ics 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 stan-
dard 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
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THE SPIRIT RISING | 33
led to a monumental set of legal battles in the early wanted to be in control of his own fate.” Eisner
twentieth century between cartoonist Rudolph also wanted to ensure that the characters he cre-
Dirks and the Hearst newspaper empire. Dirks had ated and the stories he told would ultimately be
left Hearst, which continued his Katzenjammer his. But Arnold had a more legitimate rationale
Kids, and launched a look-alike series called Hans for pushing Eisner on this issue than simple greed.
und Fritz, then The Captain and the Kids, for Both men could see that the war raging in Europe
the rival Pulitzer papers. Courts held that Hearst was likely to involve America at some point, and
had the rights to the strip but couldn’t prevent if the draft took Eisner, Arnold didn’t want to lose
Dirks from working in his own style. But The the project along with him. On the other hand,
Katzenjammer Kids long outlasted Dirks’s revised Eisner didn’t want to lose his creation or lose out
version and remains the longest-running syndi- on its hoped-for success. PREVIOUS PAGES
Detail, “Quirte,” The Spirit no. 442, November 14, 1948.
cated strip today . . . without Dirks or his heirs As a negotiator, Eisner was a good listener, and Titles rarely appeared on the original sections and were
profiting from it for close to a hundred years. he understood early that deals are sealed when assigned to the stories in their subsequent printings.
Comic book publishers were generally equally solutions address the actual needs of both parties OPPOSITE
Eisner discussing The Spirit with artists Nick Cardy and
demanding, while providing even less financial rather than simply precedents and principles. He Bob Powell, 1941. Because of the studio system and the
participation to their creative talent (with a few reached a resolution with Arnold that solved both amount of work produced under deadline, artwork was
generally the collective effort of Eisner and his assistants
notable exceptions). their issues: The copyright would initially be in during the original run of The Spirit.
Eisner didn’t want to be boxed in that way, and Arnold’s name but would ultimately revert to Eis-
BELOW
it was important to him for more than simply ner, with all the work that had been created, when The Spirit dailies begin, October 13, 1941. The Spirit
newspaper strip ran from 1941 to March 11, 1944,
financial reasons. As his friend, former MAD the partnership ended. Arnold, therefore, would
officially placing Eisner in the ranks of other respected
Magazine co-editor Nick Meglin, put it, “Eisner be able to (and ultimately did) step in and keep cartoonists of that form.
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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.
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 super-
vise, 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 sell-
ing 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 chal-
lenges would always prove interesting to Eisner.
But more than that, the opportunity combined
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two appeals that were probably stronger than either Their partnership agreement contained a fairly
money or the creative possibilities per se. First standard “put” clause: The partner who wanted to
was a new audience: Comic books were perceived dissolve the arrangement had to name a price at
to be for readers who were either young children which he was willing to either buy the other out
or semiliterate adults. This supplement would be or be bought out. In this situation, where Eisner
part of newspapers, which went to households couldn’t both continue the old shop and start his
where adults would read it and, depending on new venture, he was forced to name a relatively
which newspapers chose to run with it, potentially low price, and in the end it was settled at $20,000
sophisticated adults. (Of the big papers, only (approximately $300,000 in 2015 dollars)—clearly
the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal a modest amount for a successful venture that was
eschewed comics entirely, and New York had a half providing both partners with very comfortable
dozen other dailies, not to mention the leading lifestyles. But hands were shaken, papers drafted,
papers of other cities.) Eisner later described his and Eisner moved on.
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 SO EISNER DECAMPED TO Tudor City, an
his many recollections of the moment, was that apartment complex now with prestigious adja-
the shift in venue might earn him respect, even cency to the United Nations but then overlook-
change the way he was viewed as an artist. The ing an industrial wasteland by the river. Eisner
newspaper-strip cartoonists were being compared made the bedroom space his office, and the rest
to syndicated columnists such as Walter Winchell was for the artists. They had about six months
and Ed Sullivan, powerful figures in popular to develop the insert and build up a few finished
culture and even politics. Comic book artists and weeks to be ahead of the printing deadlines.
writers, even when their characters were immense The sixteen-page section could have more
commercial successes, were regarded with disdain. than one series, and Arnold and Martin wanted
As a first-generation American, Eisner must have a costumed hero for the lead feature, to cash in
felt the powerful lure of the respect and accep- on the momentum that Superman had estab-
tance that would come from an association with lished (the term “super hero” hadn’t yet come into
OPPOSITE
the newspaper industry. common usage). Eisner wanted a more human
Four more Spirit dailies, October 14–17, 1941. After
The last step in the transition away from Eisner character, building him, as he put it, “from the the initial six weeks by Eisner, The Spirit managed to
run even while he was in the military, with extraordinarily
and Iger was negotiating which of the artists could inside out . . . his personality—the kind of man talented artists Lou Fine and Jack Cole illustrating most of
go with Eisner. A weekly comic would require he would be, how he would look at problems, the episodes. Fine illustrated many of the most beautiful
stories published by Busy Arnold’s Quality Comics, and
more work than Eisner could do solo, but artists how he would feel about life.” He wanted some- Cole created the enduring super hero Plastic Man.
were valuable “assets” of the shop, so Iger wouldn’t one who could both act and react, which was far
FOLLOWING PAGES
let Eisner decimate the business on his way out. from the kind of characters running around the “Killer McNobby,” The Spirit no. 53, June 1, 1941.
Eisner began to experiment with storytelling approaches,
As though they were baseball players being traded early super-hero comics. The lead feature was to
both rhetorically (with this episode composed entirely in
to an expansion team, Eisner got to take Lou Fine, be a detective strip, perhaps with a touch of the rhyme) and visually (discarding panel borders for an open
structure). His crystal clear, if unconventional, storytelling
Bob Powell, and Chuck Mazoujian along with him wit of a good movie comedy. Arnold suggested
integrated lettering as a tool for leading the reader’s eye
to his new venture. names, and the Spirit stuck. To assuage his through the action.
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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.
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 straight-
forward 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.
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ON JUNE 2, 1940, Denny Colt made his debut . . .

and promptly died. Eisner introduced his detective
with jaunty body language, lots of attitude and over-
confidence, 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 experiment-
ing 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 busi-
ness. He’d have the opportunity to learn on the job.
EVEN WITH THE WORKAHOLIC ethic of the

Depression-era artists, doing eight pages of com-
ics 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
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RIGHT
Detail, “Eldas Thayer,” The Spirit no. 8, July 21, 1940.
OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SEVEN PAGES

“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.
own effect on popular culture, most notably in the the Sunday-page approach and dived right in with the twenty-first century with some discomfort.
postwar period: Dave Berg (MAD’s “The Lighter Denny Colt intruding on Commissioner Dolan’s Ellen is the commissioner’s frequently endangered
Side of . . .”); Al Jaffee (the MAD “Fold-In”); and office. The private detective and the police official daughter, who falls for the Spirit at first meeting
a very young Joe Kubert (Sgt. Rock). The relentless were a pretty generic pair as the story opened, but and would have some serious growing to do over
deadlines had a concomitant virtue, however, in Eisner’s strong ability to portray character through the run of the series to become a modern woman;
constant learning and evolution, even if there were body language and “acting” quickly made them and Ebony, oh, Ebony.
some moments to look back on and wince. distinctive. A handful of panels in, Dolan is usher- Eisner would look back on his stereotypical
The most distinctive trademark of Eisner’s ing Colt out, and we can almost hear Cary Grant little minstrel taxi driver and the spirit of the
Spirit stories would be his use of the “splash” page, reciting Colt’s, “Wait a minute, hold on!” times: “What was regarded as funny was anyone
the opening image of each tale. Traditional news- The first hint of the legendary Spirit splash who looked different. The whole culture accepted
paper comic strips had only a single page (at most) pages wouldn’t materialize for six or seven weeks, Amos ’n’ Andy. It never occurred to me that I might
each Sunday, so there was no room for a complex while the layering of Dolan and Colt’s relation- have offended black sensibilities.” Art Spiegelman
or dynamic introductory panel. Comic books had ship would grow over ensuing episodes, but in notes that cartooning instructional manuals of
a cover to work with, and some publishers were the meantime two characters joined the cast who the time were full of lessons on how to use visual
learning how to use that space dynamically with would travel with Denny Colt through the whole stereotypes to depict racial groups—the Chinaman
bold logos (particularly Ira Schnapp’s on the titles run of the series: Ellen Dolan and Ebony White. and the Jew as well—depictions Spiegelman would
that would become DC Comics) and art that was Respectively the classic romantic interest and turn on their heads with his Pulitzer Prize–winning
either rich (particularly on the Fiction House line) comic relief, they were introduced at the beginning graphic novel Maus two generations later, power-
or funny. But since The Spirit was a newspaper of the very second episode on June 9, 1940. Each fully placing menacing cat identities on the Nazis
supplement that had no cover, Eisner stuck with has dimensions that make it easy to look back from and making the oppressed Jews mice. Eisner had
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RIGHT
Detail, “Eldas Thayer,” The Spirit no. 8, July 21, 1940.
absorbed this racist shorthand from his youth and opportunities to spend time with a more diverse By early 1941, the next of the femmes fatales
didn’t have the ability to step aside and reject it. crowd than either his home or high school circles, shows up. Silk Satin is much tougher (digging
Despite that, Spiegelman added, “For the kind of or the very white and male group that populated his a bullet out of her arm in her very first scene),
minstrelsy the Spirit’s sidekick Ebony represented, studios, Eisner’s reference points were limited. His sexier . . . and torn between killing the Spirit
[he] was very humanized and very sympathetic.” Spirit reflected and reinforced the popular culture and kissing him. Eisner also thought more about
And Ebony (as well as Eisner’s other depictions that surrounded it, without trying to break free. naming characters by now and acknowledged
of racial groups) would evolve somewhat over the Eisner wasn’t unwilling to feature strong he had been influenced by the work of Chester
run, though not into a figure any later generation women in The Spirit, but their strength was in Gould on Dick Tracy. With Silk, Eisner began to
would find acceptable. direct relation to their potential for villainy. artfully “relate the names of the character to the
Ellen would serve as a comedic foil, sporting a The Spirit’s deadlier flirtations began early: In nature of the character,” using flamboyant names
Spirit-given black eye, or draped over his knee for the third episode we meet his first villainess, a more colorfully and effectively than he had with
a spanking, or declaring herself the Spirit’s rival powerful lawyer with the nickname the Black Dr. Cobra. And, seductive as the texture of her
by starting her own detective agency. As Eisner’s Queen. Unlike the deadly ladies of Eisner’s later name was, Silk is far from the most beautiful of
ability to depict expression grew more and more work, she doesn’t start off with a dead husband Eisner’s women. Although he isn’t unaware
subtle, Ellen would show every possible form of or lover in evidence, and doesn’t immediately fall of the female form (back when he was sixteen,
exasperation with her elusive quarry as the Spirit for the Spirit . . . but the potential’s there. As is his mother had complained bitterly when she
flirted his way through the stories. Both Ellen and a nice beauty shot of her in lingerie. She’d add saw his drawings of a nude model), his ability
Ebony also undoubtedly suffered from Eisner’s poison lipstick to her arsenal and offer to give to capture the subtleties of expression that
lack of worldly experience at the beginning of The the Spirit a fatal kiss before he’d close her case would make his women so sensual had only
Spirit. As a twenty-three-year-old who had no file permanently. started to develop.
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LEFT
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.
OPPOSITE
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.
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LEFT
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.
OPPOSITE
“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.
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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 back-
fire, 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 fun-
damental 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 direc-

tor’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
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RIGHT
Detail, “Hildie and the Kid Gang,” The Spirit no. 293,
January 6, 1946.
OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SEVEN PAGES

“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.
these people on the fly, so to speak, so I began to probably more in the exaggerated fashion of the street fighting experience and channel it into some
design the front cover as dramatically as I could, stage than of film, but they were coming to life. By of the most convincing dynamic battles in comics,
and entice people into the story.” By the end of the spring of 1941, he began to use the other tools setting the standard for the mass destruction that
that first summer, there was a large image on that available, including working with color in “Ebony’s would fill super-hero comics, movies, and video
first page each week, along with a single panel or X-Ray Eyes,” a negative-style image for The Spirit’s games for decades. Eisner’s fights, on the other
continuous story image. first special effect, and the first hint of how Eisner hand, evoked the choreography of movie stuntmen,
Eisner’s storytelling was quickly falling into would use lettering styles to establish mood. Un- gracefully battling each other and, at the same time,
place, too. With a weekly rhythm, it was easy to like the splash pages, which became uniquely inflicting pain on the Spirit more realistically than
see what worked and what didn’t. Use of awkward, associated with Eisner, color and lettering were other cartoonists were willing (or able) to do to
almost random, angular panels vanished, and techniques he’d use with extraordinary effectiveness their stars. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut would comment,
more interesting camera angles came into play. only when The Spirit reached its peak. “What Eisner did was to introduce agony.”
“[People] were beginning to read the way movies The combination of those tools, however, gave By the summer of 1941, Eisner was coming
taught us to read, which was making a camera out Eisner what he needed to step away from traditional in to his own, comfortable with the stage the
of us,” Eisner commented later. “So I began to use storytelling entirely. The June 1, 1941, episode supplement provided, his cast of characters, and
those [techniques] in The Spirit.” (reprinted here on pages 36–37) is the first that his abilities. The shadow of Europe’s war was com-
It wasn’t only the camera that shifted. Body Eisner told in doggerel poetry, without panels, as ing closer and closer, and on the day that France
language for the characters became progressively his characters literally fight their way across the pages signed an armistice, laying down its weapons
subtler, a shrug or gesture adding to the emotion atop and around the lettering. It’s also an excellent before the Germans in preparation for a more
of the moment in ways that a simple speech example of how Eisner’s fights were becoming dis- formal surrender, Eisner fired his first shot: the
balloon couldn’t. Eisner’s characters were acting, tinctive. Jack Kirby would take his own childhood tale of Hitler’s secret fact-finding visit to America
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Detail, “The Kissing Caper,” The Spirit no. 306,

April 7, 1946.
and his encounter with the Spirit (reprinted here to the world when he felt his mentor wasn’t get- allowed a daily didn’t hold Eisner’s attention, and
on pages 39–46). Charlie Chaplin had taken on ting the attention he deserved. after the first few weeks he left most of the work
the Great Dictator first, so satirizing Hitler wasn’t In this period, Eisner also began to intrude on it to others.
groundbreaking, but it was a clear sign of Eisner’s on his own creation’s reality. He broke down If he disliked working in an even smaller space,
increased confidence and his willingness to break what’s called “the fourth wall,” or at least peeked it was partially because his vision was already
the original detective-story boundaries of the strip. through it, in the November 9, 1941, episode, larger. The Philadelphia Record was one of the
In fact, if it wasn’t for the even greater heights when he responded to the Spirit’s submission of original papers carrying the new strip, and it
that Eisner would hit with The Spirit after the war, a case by telling him it was “utterly impossible publicized the daily’s launch with a long article.
it would be easy to look at the year’s worth of ma- and fantastic.” And then, in the May 3, 1942, The Record reported, “The comic strip, [Eisner]
terial he produced between the summer of 1941 story reprinted here on pages 53–60, Eisner be- explains, is no longer a comic strip, but in reality
and his induction into the army in May 1942 as comes a character, and the Spirit points out that an illustrated novel. It is new and raw in form just
a legendary period. The first of the architecturally his artwork is improving. The Spirit had never now, but material for limitless intelligent devel-
brilliant splashes comes in this stretch (with the been more right. opment. And eventually and inevitably it will be
Spirit standing atop his own logo, in the form of The success of The Spirit also brought about a legitimate medium for the best of writers and
the buildings of a Middle Eastern bazaar), open- an extension of the hero’s reach. The syndicate artists.” In terms Eisner would appreciate, the
ing a story that the legendary Jules Feiffer picked launched a daily newspaper strip in October 1941, statement was an act of chutzpah, unprecedented
for his book The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965). which further stretched the studio’s resources by any similar declaration from newspaper strip or
Feiffer, who would work for Eisner on The Spirit but also enabled more readers to encounter the comic book cartoonists. In ways Eisner could not
for several years after the war, knew the oeuvre characters. The structural challenges of doing possibly have foreseen, he would play a key role in
well and selected this story to reintroduce Eisner an adventure strip in the small space the papers making it come true.
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But first another cartoon character had plans when he understood the depth of the problem,
for Eisner: Uncle Sam called, and in that very Eisner came up with a way to help, using his
month, Eisner left to serve. art to explain the complex tasks simply. He in-
nately knew how to communicate with the army
— of new draftees and break down the necessary
maintenance tasks into manageable steps.
IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS BOOK, there’s Eisner was sent to the newly built Pentagon
little to be said about The Spirit during Eisner’s to work on Army Motors, a crude, mimeographed
war years. After a few weeks trying to write scripts publication aiming to cope with the overwhelming
at night during basic training, Eisner realized that challenge of getting millions of men to work with
he wouldn’t be able to continue. Busy Arnold the technology of war when only about one quarter
stepped in, as arranged, and the supplement’s of the people in the United States even owned a
production was shifted to Connecticut under his car. The star of Private Dogtag swiftly morphed
general direction. A battalion of talented people into Joe Dope and was joined by a cast of color-
worked on the series, including writers who were ful supporting characters. The assignment played
solid masters of comics and other forms, such as to Eisner’s strengths in new ways. As Jules Feiffer
ABOVE
Eisner at war (second from left), c. 1942–43. Military Manly Wade Wellman (who made his reputation would later describe him, Eisner was “less an artist,
officers in Aberdeen, Maryland, reviewing cartoon in science fiction) and Bill Woolfolk (who had even though he was very much an artist, than a
training pieces were only slightly different from Tudor City
studio artists looking at The Spirit in progress. written comics and would go on to television in researcher and a technician,” and he had an innate
OPPOSITE
the next decade), and the brilliant artist Lou Fine “curiosity about how you do things.” It wasn’t sim-
Eisner’s official army portrait, 1943. His rank of Chief (who had served in the Eisner and Iger shop and ply an assignment; it was a chance to investigate
Warrant Officer placed him above enlisted men but
below the regular officer corps. The rank was typically
the Tudor City studio). They would keep the sup- different ways to use his skills. Many of Eisner’s
used during World War II for soldiers in specialty plement going and even do better work than what fellow comics writers and artists were called on to
occupations.
appeared in most contemporary comic books. But put their talents to work on propaganda or com-
it is Eisner’s life and work, and its significance to munications for the war effort, but only Eisner cre-
the graphic novel, that we’re going to follow. ated a tool that the military still uses in recogniz-
able 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.
EISNER VACILLATED BETWEEN efforts The effectiveness of his comics and cartoons
to be classified a journalist (and avoid combat) was tested by the University of Chicago and found
and a desire to go to war that was fanned by to be strong, so soon Eisner was balancing Army
his basic training. But no sooner was he out of Motors, a civilian-supported companion project
basic than he found two men standing over his called Firepower, and illustrations for technical
bunk, asking if he wanted to do a comic strip manuals. He was broadening his creative skills be-
for the base newspaper, The Flaming Bomb. His yond the traditional comic book, and his business
work on Private Dogtag, about an inept private, skills beyond interacting with that narrow world as
led Eisner to an insight. He won the oppor- well. Chief Warrant Officer William Eisner was
tunity to do a poster promoting “preventative being trained for a new kind of combat for when
maintenance” of weapons and equipment, and the war was over, even if he didn’t fully realize it.
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WILL EISNER HAD GONE away a young man Eisner’s layouts). The section was shorter now (with
who had done work well beyond his peers and The Spirit seven pages instead of eight), the daily
showed great promise. He returned from the army, strip had run its course (having ended on March 11,
and while the G.I. Bill created many opportunities 1944), and Eisner himself more focused. The first
for the World War II vets, Eisner’s choices in life episode to come off his board was, suitably, a
were limited by his commitments. As his widow, celebration.
Ann, recalled recently, “Will was always a respon- Picking up on a tradition he had established
sible person,” and rather than run off to study at in 1940, Eisner greeted his readers as they were
the Sorbonne or some other destination, he needed gathering for the holidays with an annual episode
to provide for his parents. So Eisner took back the to celebrate the human spirit. On Christmas Eve,
reins from Busy Arnold without debate, rented Denny Colt left watch over the city to Santa Claus
offices at 37 Wall Street (where he’d sold newspapers and the magic of a holiday tradition that wasn’t
as a boy), and swung back into action. There were Eisner’s own. Eisner had reason to celebrate, too;
a variety of laws protecting returning G.I.s’ rights not only had he come through the war without
to get back jobs that they’d given up for the dura- being fired upon, but The Spirit was near its peak
tion, but it was Eisner’s own talent that was his as a business, with some five million copies being
strongest guarantee. No one could possibly do The delivered to the twenty or so papers that carried it.
Spirit as well, and a number of brilliant cartoonists Eisner was back in his city and ready to go.
had proven that during the war. Some adjustments There was one other staff change, which didn’t
in the team were needed (most notably with appear important at first. A sixteen-year-old came
John Spranger coming in to do tight pencils from knocking on the studio door, carrying a portfolio
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THE SPIRIT UNBOUND | 67
PREVIOUS PAGES
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.
OPPOSITE AND LEFT

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.
that Eisner found unimpressive. But the kid knew truly appreciated his quest to elevate comics, and to have long discussions about [comics] as an art
more about Eisner’s work than the artist himself the process of teaching and talking about the art form—not quite the same way as it’s done today;
could recall, and he was willing to do anything. So form would contribute to Eisner’s own understand- with no nostalgia, really groping. ‘How can we
Eisner let Jules Feiffer through the door to become ing of his work, as all teachers learn by teaching. improve this?’” Feiffer himself pointed to another
an assistant, even if initially he wasn’t allowed (or “When you were in a conversation with Will, you factor: “Look at the pre-war Spirit and the dra-
qualified) to do much. always knew you were in a conversation with a matic shift [after the war]. Noir film had come in;
What Feiffer did do was learn. “There are a thinking man,” said Feiffer. “I don’t mean an intel- Will had seen Double Indemnity. He saw how the
number of people you meet as an artist, if you’re lectual, I mean someone who was deeply involved windows cast shadows on people’s faces, and he
lucky enough, who give you permission, open doors with process. One of the things I truly hated and learned those lessons as nobody else did.”
for you, show you the way. They open a dark room resented as his apprentice, not yet even an assistant, Or as Frank Miller, the writer/penciler of The
and flash a light on in it. You say, ‘Oh my god, the was he insisted that I know how comics were made, Dark Knight Returns put it, looking back on Eisner’s
stuff in this room. I had no idea there’s so much and he took me down to the printing plant. He return, “It was as if the handcuffs had come off.”
stuff in this room!’ Then you go into the room and showed me the presses. I had no curiosity about the
you do your own thing in that room, but you could machinery at work. But Will had curiosity about —
never have done it if that artist didn’t show you the how you do things, how you make things work.”
light. And Will splashed just that kind of light.” Here was someone Eisner could talk to about EISNER HIMSELF ATTRIBUTED much
Feiffer’s presence in the studio meant more than his aspirations for comics and who would help of the change to the limits of his earlier days,
another pair of hands. Eisner had a disciple who make them happen. Eisner would recall, “We used saying,“Prior to the war, I had spent most of my
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life working and drawing within the walls of the who alternated their murderous schemes by vying most oft-reprinted Spirit splashes (October 6,
studio—a pretty cloistered life. I had not really with Ellen for his affection, but Eisner was being 1946). Eisner’s most blatantly sexual villainess
seen much of the world.” When you consider that less subtle about their sexuality. Silk Satin returns proceeded to serially seduce, marry, and murder
Eisner started Eisner and Iger at nineteen and had in his very first month back, but with the revela- her victims. A play on the Quartier Pigalle, Paris’s
been working incessantly at a drawing board from tion that a little girl named Hildie, introduced in district with cabarets and sex shops, she’d dance
then until leaving for the army six years later, that’s the strip a few episodes before, is her daughter— through the life of victim after victim,acquiring
a gentle understatement. It was a different man a revelation shrugged off with, “What are you diamonds and secret formulas and inspiring some
who came home, and a different artist. all staring at? It happens in the best of families!” of Eisner’s most interesting compositions.
One change was his level of sophistication. Silk was followed by Nylon Rose (at a time when The change in Eisner’s own sophistication was
The Eisner who had left for the army was long nylons were famously the best barter goods for uneven. Ebony’s dialect and facial features still
past being a virgin or a naïf. But the hours at the American soldiers in occupied Europe when the seemed left over from a less enlightened Eisner.
board, and a social world heavily weighted with boys wanted a little R&R with the local ladies), Ebony was spurned by a girl for talking like a “civil
aspiring cartoonists and family, had influenced and Olga Bustle (“the girl with the big, big . . . war minstrel man,” and decided to go off to school
his view of real and fantasy women. When Eisner eyes . . .”). And then . . . P’Gell. to get educated. Ebony still makes later-generation
came back, his women were different. The Spirit “I am P’Gell . . . and this is not a story for readers uncomfortable, but his temporary replace-
was still frequently challenged by tough women little boys!!” she introduced herself in one of the ment, an Eskimo named Blubber, at least speaks
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precisely in his debut. By the time Ebony returned, Will was the first, because as original as The Spirit
he was still talking colorfully, but not in full was, if it was only appearing in Police Comics, [his
“minstrel” style. Ebony—and the whole African membership] would never have happened. It was
American experience—would continue to be prob- only because it appeared in the newspapers. I’m
lematic for Eisner, as a 1947 episode incorporating not sure [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster were in the
references to bebop music showed. The younger National Cartoonists Society, even [though] Super-
and more politically aware Feiffer winced and man was syndicated.” That brought new, sometimes
closed his eyes. complex relationships. Men such as Milton Caniff,
Eisner’s life was changing in his artistic circles, who had been Eisner’s inspirations, were now peers.
too. The cartoonists who had united to entertain One of Eisner’s new peers was Al Capp, whose
the troops during the war formed the National Li’l Abner was an incredibly popular strip. Capp
Cartoonists Society following its end in 1946. himself was a public figure when he called Eisner in
Feiffer recalled, “The National Cartoonists Society 1947 to suggest they stage a fake feud and crossover
wouldn’t allow a comic book artist in . . . I think parodies of their characters. Eisner went for it
OPPOSITE AND LEFT

Selected panels from “The Origin of The Spirit,” The
Spirit no. 294, January 13, 1946. Note the tremendous
growth in storytelling and mood as the series evolved.
Every element, including the lettering, is more polished
and effective.
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LEFT
Original art for the splash of “A Legend,” The Spirit
no. 321, July 21, 1946. Nobody in comics used weather
like Eisner, particularly rainstorms.
ABOVE
Original art, Spirit Jam, 1981. MAD Magazine
creator Harvey Kurtzman, arguably Eisner’s only peer in
his generation as both a pioneer and a teacher, in this
panel coined the neologism “Eisnshpritz” (later modified
to Eisenspritz or Eisenshpritz) to describe Eisner’s
energetic rainstorms.
OPPOSITE
“The School for Girls,” The Spirit no. 347, January 19,
1947. A pioneering example of a storytelling device
that has become common decades later—a cutaway
where the action proceeds from room to room as
though in panels.
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and delivered on their agreement in his July 20 the size of Alan Ladd. When [Eisner] did someone
strip that year. But Capp never followed through who weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, you
by featuring a hint of The Spirit in his much more knew it, and when he did someone who weighed
widely read strip. The bad blood lingered. three hundred pounds, you knew that. He put
If cross-promotion didn’t attract readers to weight on the page as nobody else did.”
The Spirit, Eisner would pull them in with his One of the other lasting signatures of Eisner’s art
attention-grabbing splash pages, which reached style manifests after his return: “the Eisenshpritz,” a
their peak in the postwar years. A highly arbitrary term his fellow artists used for how he’d depict
analysis of them shows that seven of the classic the rainy deluges in The Spirit. Weather is a
logo-integrated-into-a-scene splashes were on pre- notoriously difficult element for cartoonists to
draft Spirits, only two during Eisner’s service, and incorporate in their work: Besides the amount of
fifty after his return. If there’s a singular signature detail involved in rain falling, it needs to affect
for The Spirit, it’s these pieces, and Eisner hits his the complex folds of clothing, the texture of the
stride much more often on his return. ground below, lighting sources . . . in short, almost
The art itself changed, too. Eisner retells the everything. But the mood of a rainy day was
Spirit’s origin within weeks back at the board, but perfect for the emotions of many Spirit stories,
this is a very different cartoonist at work. The and Eisner changed the climate of his hero’s
body language, the expressions, the subtlety of environment to take advantage of it.
the drawing, is so much better than five years Take Eisenshpritz, and add the shadows cast in
before. It’s possible that another effect of breaking a night city, and that’s a perfect background for
out of the cloister was that Eisner had more of an the postwar Spirit’s deadliest villain, the Octo-
opportunity to study different people in his army pus. Never fully seen during this period, he was
years, observing how they expressed themselves and consistently behind a great deal of mayhem, with
filing it away for future reference. His ink line was only his distinctive gloves marking his presence.
smoother, too, as if Eisner decided that he could On one level, the Spirit inhabited a deadlier city
portray more as a cartoonist than an illustrator, after the war, and yet the stories somehow were OPPOSITE
Original art for “Li’l Adam,” The Spirit no. 373, July 20,
using a bolder brushstroke. The better storytelling simultaneously heavier and lighter. Eisner was able 1947. A murderous feud between Eisner and cartoonist
allows the art and dialogue to tell the tale without to accomplish this by gently violating the syndi- Al Capp was born in the pages of this story, when Capp
didn’t honor his deal to reciprocate by featuring the Spirit
excessive narration. The dialogue, even the letter- cate’s guideline that the stories had to be complete in his more widely read strip, Li’l Abner.
ing, was now snappier than before. in each supplement (even tougher now that the ABOVE
Physically, the characters and their staging postwar episodes were shorter). Eisner, therefore, “Li’l Adam,” The Spirit no. 373, July 20, 1947.
changed, too. “The later Eisner did bodies that began using the tools of story continuity to work
were real and thick, and when somebody threw a around the limits.
punch, you felt it, in a way you didn’t even with Continuity was a subtler tool in Eisner’s hands
[Jack] Kirby, because Kirby’s realism wasn’t real,” than in the cliffhangers of the movie serials that
Feiffer observed. “When a two-hundred-and-fifty- played in theaters week after week. The Octopus’s
pound guy slugged the Spirit, you knew he was get- plot would be foiled, and the Spirit’s eyes ban-
ting the shit kicked out of him. It comes right out daged from the resulting explosion . . . but the au-
of The Glass Key, when William Bendix is kicking dience is led to believe he’ll be able to see “in a day
the shit out of Alan Ladd, and Bendix is three times or so,” but it wasn’t. The next week, a still-blind
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LEFT
Detail, original art for “The Story of Gerhard Schnobble,”
The Spirit no. 432, September 5, 1948. From the back of
the first page of original art for the story: an unpublished
Eisner doodle, a variation of the art for the first page of
the story.
OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SIX PAGES

“The Story of Gerhard Schnobble,” The Spirit no. 432,
September 5, 1948. Eisner’s favorite of the Spirit tales, it
was perhaps a metaphor for his own frustrations, as his
work “flew” but achieved little recognition outside the
comics community.
Spirit solves an unrelated case, and the week after Eisner’s upbringing had led him to be very careful Eisner was comfortable enough to devote an
he manages to clear a dog accused of murder. Until with money, and his unusual business acumen for a episode to adapting an Ambrose Bierce short story,
finally, with the assistance of Silken Floss, and a cartoonist only exaggerated that part of his reputa- saluting one of the authors whose works consistently
miracle formula, his sight is restored. Over the tion among his colleagues.) inspired him, and ending with the Spirit telling
cycle, Eisner plays with a wide tonal range, giving As often as not, the stories still ended with a Ebony not to neglect books as part of his enter-
his readers variety but keeping the links that give dead body. But Eisner clearly did feel that the tainment. A month later, Eisner followed with an
the underlying story more resonance. “handcuffs were off,” and he began to do stories adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Not content
Overall, the tone grew lighter after the war, that only remotely fit the original definition of the with staging short stories and slipping them into the
more playful. Whether it was reflective of Eisner’s strip. Decades later, in conversation with Milton format by a meaningful appearance of his nominal
own mood or his perception of the nation’s attitude, Caniff, Eisner talked about one of the difficulties hero, for a moment Eisner was stepping away from
more episodes ended with a line to make the reader of syndication. “One initially enters the syndicate constraints entirely and flying.
smile, even if a heinous crime had unraveled. And strip business with a new idea and a fresh idea and Which leads, inexorably, to Eisner’s favorite Spirit
more and more often, Eisner would just go all the a fresh personality. And your strip becomes widely comic over the twelve-year run: “The Story of Gerhard
way for gentle laughs, whether with a struggle over bought. A year or two later, being the inventive Shnobble.” Eisner pulled out all the stops on this
the ownership of the acquitted dog, or even a bit person you are, you want to add new things and do installment, including introducing photomontage for
of pre-MAD satire on the increasing commercial- new things, and then your hand is stayed because backgrounds. In his own words: “It represents the first
ization of society—by doing an episode interlaced they say, ‘We bought this particular strip. We want time I allowed myself to go flat out for a ‘literary’ theme.
with commercials until the Spirit trashed Eisner you to be what you were when we bought you.’” If It epitomized the philosophical statement which I
himself, exclaiming, “How cheap can a cartoonist Eisner really felt any of that pressure, he pushed his regard as the true distinction between the entertainment
get?” (Perhaps a knowing bit of self-parody there, as way past it. story and the story that makes comics literature.”
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On another level, however, it’s possible that

Eisner’s love of the tale came from its echo of some
of his own feelings about his work. Eisner described
the story by saying, “People have moments of glory
that nobody knows about.” By the time Shnobble
was done, in late 1948, The Spirit clearly represented
a unique achievement, something different from
what had been done previously in comic books or
comic strips in America; Eisner had flown. But in
many ways, humankind hadn’t noticed.
There were no reviews of comics paralleling
those done of books or even films, no scholarly
studies of the form; it would be two more decades
before the first histories of the comic strip or comic
book would be published in America. Comics had
not gathered the critical regard Eisner had imagined
they would in the seven years since his statement
about the future of the medium in that Philadelphia
Record article. Rather, it was the reverse.
Since 1940, there had been a stream of criticism
of comic books and their effect on young people.
By 1948, the stream was becoming a rushing
tide, with local laws restricting the distribution of
crime comics, and with comic book burnings and
crusaders trying to brand comics as the cause of
juvenile delinquency. In general, newspaper strips
didn’t feel the heat the way comic books did, in
part because the newspaper editors had kept the
boundaries far more sanitized than some of the
comic book publishers, and in part because, as a
stepchild of the papers, the strips were viewed as
part of the media establishment and, therefore,
less singled out for attack. Eisner wasn’t afraid,
even having tweaked the censors in small print in
a Spirit episode on July 13, 1947, entitled “Fairy
Tales for Juvenile Delinquents.” He turned up the

heat a bit more on February 2, 1949, with a story
about a music teacher who salvages a comic from a
comic book burning by the school psychiatrist,
Dr. Wolfgang Worry (more than likely a nod to Dr.
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OPPOSITE
Original manuscript page for “The Cigar,”
an unpublished Spirit story, c. 1948, later
reprinted in The Spirit Archives no. 26, 2009.
Klaus Nordling’s original typed script for this
episode is one of the few manuscripts from

the entire run to survive.
RIGHT
Original art layouts for “The Cigar,” c. 1948.
Klaus Nordling’s layouts for this unpublished
Spirit script survives on the back of a page of
“Gerhard Schnobble” originals.
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Dr. Fredric Wertham, a leading voice in the

attacks on comics), only to be terrified by the
small child who wants to reclaim it.
If Eisner felt that his series and the medium
weren’t getting the respect they deserved, that
wasn’t stopping him from doing brilliant work.
The Spirit continued at top form through 1950,
with Feiffer growing into more of a collaborator
and writing some of the scripts. Feiffer had
even gotten the opportunity to do his own strip,
Clifford, on the last page of the now-shrunken
supplement. Part of the fun of working in the
studio was the conversation: “Will and I were the
two smart Jews in the room who read books and
had ideas. Then [letterer] Abe Kanegson came
along, who was like that, too,” Feiffer recalled.
And part of the fun was continuing to push the
limits of the form. One of Feiffer’s favorites was
done in the style of a child’s primer, “The Story of
Rat-Tat, the Toy Machine Gun” on September 4,
1949, written around the time that some stories
began to be produced from his scripts without
significant rewriting by Eisner.
Eisner was devoting some of his prodigious
energy to new ventures through American Visuals,
but The Spirit continued to soak up most of the
energy in the studio and generate most of
the income. Even if Eisner wasn’t scripting a
particular story, he would be constructing it by
providing the layouts in rough pencils, doing the
work of a director, cinematographer, set designer,
and the actors. It’s difficult in a studio collaboration
to tell where the specific credits for any piece of
work belong, but because Eisner was both the
leading talent in the room and the creator of
the characters and the format, it’s impossible to

understate his influence. As the forties ended and
the fifties began, he was increasingly distracted
by new opportunities and projects, but the
exceptional quality of The Spirit was maintained
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by a homeopathic solution of Eisner magic . . . a the birth of his son, John, on April 19, 1952, but
moment of advice, or encouragement, or a redrawn his cartoon child was showing real signs of neglect.
line. The series wasn’t setting new standards, but it A last-ditch effort to bring in the very talented
was continuing at a high level. Wally Wood to reenergize The Spirit in late 1952
Until it wasn’t. Part of the change was due was probably doomed from the start by Wood’s
to a new balance in Eisner’s life. He began his other commitments. Wood crafted a story taking
romance with Ann Weingarten with a Labor Day the Spirit to the moon, but he left Eisner picking
1949 friendly lift to Maine, which matured into up the deadline slack when Eisner had less
a lifelong partnership. But Ann was a life partner, appetite for that than ever before. Although
not a comics partner (not even stepping into his The Spirit was still financially viable, its time had
studio until after they were married on June 15, come. “I wanted to leave while the show was still
1950), so there was now a strong force pulling a success,” Eisner said in retrospect. But the
Eisner away from his board. Weekends, at least, reality was that he’d already left.
would no longer be ink-stained. By the end, Feiffer felt, “Will was dying to
Ann Eisner’s family were German Jews, a give up the cartoons, the comics, and The Spirit,
distinction that, at the time, meant they had and be a businessman. He wasn’t getting the
been in America longer and were more economi- respect. He was Rodney Dangerfield, except that
cally established and secure than Eisner’s family Dangerfield was a kind of a thug. Will was an
of Eastern European Jews, a group they often intelligent, thoughtful man, working at something
disdained for their comparative lack of education, he was as good or better at as anyone else in the
wealth, and sophistication. Ann’s father, Melville field, who wasn’t getting the payoff he believed
Weingarten, was a successful stockbroker and he he deserved because society and the culture didn’t
OPPOSITE
demonstrated no respect for Eisner’s work as a value that product.” Original art for the splash of “Il Duce’s Locket,” The Spirit
no. 365, May 25, 1947. Eisner’s postwar women such
cartoonist. His attempt to lure Eisner into his From the perspective of the twenty-first
as P’Gell were far sexier and more dangerous, perhaps
field failed, but it was one more factor adding to century, of course, Eisner got that respect, and reflecting the artist’s wider experience, and with a nod to
the Quartier Pigalle, Paris’s red-light district.
the pressures encouraging Eisner the businessman on an extraordinary level. If history is written by
to take over from Eisner the artist. the victors, then the cultural proponents of the ABOVE
The wedding of Will Eisner and Ann Weingarten,
As 1951 went along, even the magic drop possibilities of comics have clearly triumphed over June 15, 1950. Eisner settled down with someone less
of Eisner’s contribution to the mix of talents their detractors. And as it is written by Eisner’s murderous than his fictional women but strong enough
to prove a successful life partner in their almost fifty-year
that was creating The Spirit was growing hard successors, the business model he developed for marriage.
to spot. His other commitments were absorbing controlling his own property and profiting from it FOLLOWING PAGES
his creative energy, and there is little of Eisner in is looked back upon as a prescient precedent that Original art layouts by Jules Feiffer for “Outer Space,”
The Spirit no. 635, July 27, 1952.
The Spirit’s last year or year and a half besides the would be emulated successfully several decades
skills he had passed on to Feiffer and others in later. But although Eisner was about to step away
the studio. One telltale sign of this is the virtual from comics, probably expecting to do so for the
disappearance of the signature splash pages, a rest of his career, his return would prove vital to
visual puzzle for which Eisner had a unique achieving both of those triumphs.
genius: Only three truly original ones appear in
1951, and the last two at the very beginning of
1952. Eisner’s personal life had grown fuller with
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ALL LIVES HAVE THEIR Robert Frost moments, new challenges. There wasn’t room in the market-
when two roads diverge in a wood, and late at place for another newspaper comics section like
night many of us lie in bed reconsidering our The Spirit. Indeed, no one else would ever manage
choices. Will Eisner was never an uncertain man, to make such a project successful for an extended
nor given much to dreams that looked backward, period of time. The shop model for producing
but it’s fascinating to examine the turn his life took comic book stories for publishers was vanishing, as
toward commercial comics and consider what the the publishers exercised more direct control over
road not traveled might have looked like. What if their freelancers. Even for a star talent like Eisner,
Eisner, at the first peak of his creative ability, had the economic opportunity in working directly for a
chosen to concentrate fully on storytelling for the comic book publisher was dramatically worse than
sake of art rather than for commerce? It’s easy to he had already achieved—and in the late 1940s, it
imagine some glorious results . . . or an explosion was getting worse month by month. So the paths
of frustration and anger that could have ensured he’d pioneered were either well trod or exhausted.
that his later graphic novel work never came to Eisner needed to find new opportunities.
pass. It’s also possible that the long detour into There was one other pioneering experience
commerce was part of the secret of his later work, Eisner could build on: Even before Eisner and Iger
building up a desire to pursue his art while learn- had met, Eisner had produced a comic to sell a
ing the craft required to use it for communication product called Gre-Solvent, a little eight-panel tale
of ideas that were not his own. The answers are on yellow paper (to match the packaging of the soap
impossible to pin down with any certainty, because compound). The printer who had the deal to create
Eisner did choose what, for artists, anyway, was the the comic had hired Eisner to do the content.
road less taken. Using comics as advertising or marketing tools had
After his return from the army, and the grown in the ensuing decade, and there were any
renewed vigor of his work on The Spirit, Eisner number of players producing what would ultimately
began to reach the point where he was in need of become known as “commercial” or “custom” comics,
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STORYTELLING BUSINESS | 91
PREVIOUS PAGES
Detail, cover of PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
no. 2, July 1951.
OPPOSITE
“Gre-Solvent,” 1936. Eisner’s earliest attempt to use his
cartooning skills to sell a product shows only a hint of the
talent he would later demonstrate.
RIGHT
Cartoons from The Flaming Bomb, c. 1942–43.
After Eisner entered the military, he began contributing
cartoons to existing army publications. Some were just
to make soldiers smile, while others carried messages
similar to those he would employ in PS.
including major publishers such as National Comics, and workers for the expanding American economy; made him interact with a wider range of people.
the publishers of Superman and Batman, and advertis- The Spirit reached an audience in the millions, Overall, he was ready.
ing agencies such as Johnstone and Cushing, which larger than any single comic book, and demon- In his own words, “I decided I’d rather be an
had used comics characters to promote products strated his skill as a communicator with the hard entrepreneur than an artist.”
since the early 1930s. In most cases, commercial numbers that businessmen preferred; and, best of And so was born American Visuals.
comics were sure moneymakers for their producers: all, the growing stigma that was becoming attached
The corporate client would provide free distribu- to comic books was not battering the newspaper —
tion along with their product or at a retail point of comic strip world—and The Spirit was part of
sale as a promotion, buying out the entire print run. the newspaper. There were cons, too: The men to IN 1948, EISNER BEGAN TO develop ideas,
The challenge was finding clients and convincing whom Eisner would have to sell his services were a pitching to companies such as Sears, Roebuck &
them that you were capable of creating and deliver- very different sort than the editors and publishers Company, the massive retailer of the period, and
ing a solution for their needs. Eisner and Iger had as customers. They were more creating programs for industrial training and
If Eisner weighed the pros and cons of this sophisticated, more confident, and more part of employee relations for the burgeoning workforce.
venture, he would have tallied several factors in the establishment. But another virtue of Eisner’s The industrial training was a direct descendent of
his favor: His work on Army Motors showed his military experience, as it had been for many others his Army Motors work and in some cases even came
experience in reaching the very men who, as they during World War II, was that it had taken him out about because his old military contacts were now in
demobilized, were becoming the key customers of his largely immigrant-centered community and the publication departments of large corporations
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such as General Motors, and they recalled Eisner’s

dexterity at communicating information. With
unprecedented numbers of men reentering civilian
employment, arriving with limited education and
skills, employers faced challenges absorbing them
even as demand soared and factories retooled for con-
sumer goods. The eleven million military personnel
being demobilized would change the dynamics of
the country’s workforce. At the end of World War II,
veterans’ programs offered many opportunities
for the returnees, but they weren’t focused on the
specific needs of companies hiring for a revitalized
economy. Employers would have to come up with
their own approaches to assimilate the vets.
But as has been the case for commercial com-
ics throughout their existence, success was only
achieved when a good idea matched a particular
need of a client, and its executives were open-
minded enough to accept this unconventional
alternative to more traditional tools. While Eisner
was at the drawing board, spitballing ideas, he
began to develop some projects that he felt would
work as regular comic books, too. From his earliest
days at Eisner and Iger, he was used to negotiat-
ing face-to-face with publishers, and he felt both
that his taste was better than theirs and that if they
could master the process of comic book publish-
ing, then he certainly could master it, too. Nor was
Eisner the only cartoonist at the time to make the
move to being a publisher. Al Capp, taking control
of the comic book rights to his hit newspaper strip
Li’l Abner, launched Toby Press in 1949. Given the
complex relationship between Capp and Eisner,
it’s not impossible to surmise that word of Capp’s
decision spurred Eisner on.
Regardless of the motivations, becoming a

publisher was one of Eisner’s rare business misjudg-
ments. “There’s a lot to magazine distribution that
does not meet the eye; it’s like an iceberg,” Eisner
would comment, looking back on his brief stint as
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OPPOSITE
Cover for Baseball Comics no. 1, Spring 1949.
Eisner struck out with his brief venture into comics
publishing.
BELOW
Detail, Fireball Bambino, c. 1949. The only surviving
daily from a newspaper-strip pitch developed by Eisner,
playing off the nickname of the legendary Babe Ruth.
RIGHT
“Nubbin, the Shoeshine Boy,” 1948. This never-before-
published sample issue of Tab (i.e., “Tabloid”) featuring
Will Eisner’s “Nubbin, the Shoeshine Boy” on the first
page, was an attempt by Eisner to sell “ready-made”
Sunday comics sections to smaller newspapers that
could not afford to assemble their own via syndicates.
Subscribing clients would add their paper’s logo at the
top of page 1. There were blank spots on the inside
between comics so the newspaper could sell local
advertising to offset the cost of buying Tab in bulk.
Eisner’s mailing pitch failed to attract enough customers,
and he dropped the idea.
FOLLOWING PAGES, LEFT AND RIGHT

Idaho Fish and Game Commission Posters, c. 1952.
Eisner created cartoon campaigns to sell products and
ideas, addressing political and social issues as well as
simple public safety measures such as these.
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a publisher. Kewpies; Baseball Comics; The Adven-

tures of Nubbin, the Shoeshine Boy; and John Law all
vanished as fast as they were launched, taking with
them considerable amounts of Eisner’s money. He’d
blame the distribution system, or the fact that his
few titles were swamped by the larger lines of other
publishers, but those were structural concerns he’d
simply underestimated. This was a very different
comic book market than the one Eisner had been
most familiar with almost a decade before; success-
ful new publishers were no longer springing up one
after another and finding ways to compete. The ice-
berg had sunk Eisner’s publishing ambitions. Eisner
would step away from taking the publishing risk on
his projects at American Visuals and would stick to
producing material to order for others.
MEANWHILE, THE RELENTLESS rhythm

of The Spirit sustained Eisner’s studio, even if it
captured less and less of his attention and passion
as the forties ended. American Visuals began to ac-
quire a momentum of its own, producing projects
across a very wide spectrum of subjects. Customers
as different from the army as the American Medical
Association commissioned comics, and even comics
touching such far-reaching problems as soil erosion
in Pakistan were pitched with the Eisner treatment,
if not produced. Different visual approaches were
used, but all with roots in the comic strip tech-
nique. Eisner had come to “the exciting realization
that comics are a teaching tool,” and he began to
perfect ways to convince clients to pay for them.
It’s characteristic of commercial comics that
long-term customers are the rarest for a producer to

find. Most users of commercial comics either have a
very specific short-term goal, such as a product pro-
motion or marketing tie-in, or they want something
that can be used and reused over and over again,
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such as employee training guides. So when the

U.S. Army reconnected with Eisner, in the person
of Norman Colton, it became a turning point for
American Visuals. Colton knew Eisner from Army
Motors, and he reached out because the new war in
Korea would require new educational tools for the
draftees to master their new equipment.
Eisner took elements from his old Army Motors
work, renamed the publication PS: The Preven-
tive Maintenance Monthly, and began creating a
dummy issue for testing. American Visuals would
be responsible for the overall design and creation
of the artwork. Unsurprisingly, given the massive
bureaucracies that exist within an organization as
large as the U.S. military, there were conflicts over
the direction of the magazine—and over its very
existence. But the need was genuine, and Eisner
was uniquely qualified to answer it.
It wasn’t immediately clear that the army
contract would be a lasting relationship: The first
contract was for only six issues, and, as with all
government contracts, there was a complex bidding
process when it came up for renewal. There were
behind-the-scenes maneuvers as well, with Colton
attempting to get a piece of equity in the project.
Ann Eisner recalled, “We never anticipated the
aggravation that would follow . . . twenty years of
machinations that went into the annual negotia-
tions regarding whether or not to renew Will’s
contract.” But Eisner had grown up negotiating
with the first generation of street-tough comics
publishers, and he held his own through all these
complications.
PS (meaning “postscript”) launched in June
1951 and immediately became the most significant
program in the Eisner studio. “[It] actually helped

me build an enterprise, which is the way it often
happens with companies that get military con-
tracts,” Eisner later recalled. American Visuals had
hundreds of projects, since many pitches had to be
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developed beyond the ones that actually sold. PS

alone grew to an eight-person staff within the stu-
dio, in addition to the army’s far-larger contingent
that was producing the prose section and interact-
ing with Eisner’s team. Besides the magazine itself,
the studio produced work translating technical
manuals for the allied nations that were fighting
alongside American forces, using equipment pro-
vided by the United States. Eisner’s communica-
tion skills were very much in demand.
The Spirit continued for a few more months,
but by the time the second PS contract began,
what the Octopus and the killers of Central City
couldn’t do, the U.S. Army could: Denny Colt
vanished into Wildwood Cemetery. Eisner was now
solidly entrenched in the most business-focused
period of his professional life, commuting to the
city from suburban White Plains in Westchester,
New York, where his family had grown with the
birth of their daughter, Alice, on October 21, 1953.
PS continued to thrive through the Korean
conflict and survived crises, tests of its efficiency at
the University of Chicago, and the war itself, be-
coming a steady stream of pocket-size information
throughout the Cold War. PS achieved monthly
status in 1955. Looking back at this body of work,
graphic novelist Eddie Campbell pointed out that
“humorous drawings have a long history of use as
mnemonic devices, going back to the marginal
drawings in medieval illuminated prayer books.”
He observed that Eisner’s style on the magazine
was a throwback to his earlier work, indicating that
in the early days of PS there’s more pure Eisner
than in the later Spirit, where the studio team had
taken more of a role.
The body of work produced by American

Visuals reflected Eisner’s emphasis on humor as
a learning tool and also represented a learning
opportunity for him. Because commercial com-
ics and the other communication projects going
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through his studio represented different challenges While PS continued to be the common thread OPPOSITE
Original art for Joe Dope poster, November 1966
each time, Eisner continued to distill his thoughts from year to year, American Visuals grew and Humor and sexy ladies were key to Eisner’s approach
on storytelling. Whether Rip Roscoe was extolling changed several times. The company expanded to communicating with American soldiers—a virtually
all-male and mostly young audience.
the joys of the new touch-tone telephones for New into producing material for “reading racks” (as the
ABOVE
York Telephone, or Joe Dope was disassembling a name suggests, racks of pamphlets usually placed
Excerpts from PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly
rifle properly, Eisner preferred that you smiled as on a factory floor for employees to peruse during no. 53, 1957 (left) and no. 26, 1954 (right).
you absorbed the information. The difficulties of downtime, or for placement in school guidance FOLLOWING PAGES
balancing a client’s demands, the intrinsic needs of offices to suggest career paths), and merged in the Original art for a Joe Dope training poster for the Bureau
of Special Services, c. 1941–45.
the information to be presented, and finding an late 1950s into a publicly traded company named
appropriate way to communicate complex ideas the Koster-Dana Corp., which was a leader in that
briefly and palatably became an opportunity for field. Eisner became the company president, the
Eisner to develop his approaches. And the need to first (and to date, six decades later, only) comic
lead his staff in the execution of these projects meant book creator to head a public company. This was
that he had to explain his approach repeatedly— a role Eisner didn’t look back on fondly, com-
always a useful way for a teacher to polish a theory. menting, “I was a lousy man to be working in a
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public company and for a board of directors . . .

they were doing things I didn’t like, for reasons I
didn’t approve of.” Koster-Dana, in turn, acquired
the Bell-McClure Syndicate around 1960, which
reconnected Eisner with the newspaper strip busi-
ness, if only briefly.
Ann Eisner doesn’t recall her husband aching
for the creative side of comics during these years,
just serving the business side of his own personal-
ity. “Will was doing things to make a living,” Ann
said, noting that he was providing for his extended
family and was even able to bring his younger
brother, Pete, into the business.
At the beginning of the 1960s, Koster-Dana
was shifting its focus from storytelling into more
industrial directions. So Eisner bought back
American Visuals, using the leverage that the army
contract (which was with him personally, not the
larger entity) gave him. New projects continued to
attract his attention, and he developed a publica-
tion called Job Scene for the Department of Labor,
reaching five million disadvantaged youths (a
particularly restive group in the mid-1960s). Not
content with telling stories in cartoon form, Eisner
led American Visuals into multimedia approaches
and in 1967 began to publish the World Explorer
Program to teach social studies in elementary grades.
PS continued, and many of its readers were
now fighting in Vietnam, as the American involve-
ment in that war expanded. Eisner felt no guilt
about that, explaining to interviewer John Benson
in 1968, “I’m a teacher; I’m turning out instruc-
tional material,” and “I’ll teach anything with
[comics]. I’d teach how to conduct a peace march
in [comics] if we had a customer for it, or if I felt
it was useful, or if I had a place where it could be

distributed.” He visited Vietnam (as well as most
of the zones where the U.S. military was active or
entrenched during his years doing PS ), and, while
he described himself as “not being a dove,” he was
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clearly comfortable with what he viewed as the

politically neutral task of teaching good mainte-
nance, listing it, along with comics about democ-
racy for Latin America, as just another in the litany
of subjects he dealt with as he expanded the use of
comics as a teaching tool.
Looking back on the American Visuals period,
some of Eisner’s critics, and even some of his friends,
continue to question choices he made at the time,
from his PS work to producing material for the
American Medical Association against “nationalized
medicine” (in the form of Medicare). As Ann Eisner
commented after his death, Will had felt “that the
war was a mistake. But with PS he tried to help the
troops.” It’s clear, however, that Eisner the business-
man took precedence over Eisner the individual on
these decisions.
It’s also clear that Eisner’s search for respect-
ability for himself and his chosen medium had
increasingly focused on the educational process.
Teaching was eminently respectable, even echoing
his mother’s importuning for him to become an art
teacher. He defined himself as an educator rather
than a communicator or an entertainer (though he
continued to fulfill all these roles to some degree
simultaneously), and using comics as educational
tools was a path to transferring that respect to
his work. That he’d moved into this aspect of
comics as the medium hit its overall low point in
respectability was perhaps not as coincidental as he
preferred to recall.
But while these new, more definably education-
al projects were absorbing more of Eisner’s person-
al attention, there were voices within the army that
were interested in seeing how PS might fare with
new blood, and Eisner ultimately decided it was

time to walk away from PS after two decades and
227 issues. Ann recalled, “He was just exhausted”
at the end. An attempt was made to shift the con-
tract to a new, separate company quietly set up by
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PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT

Covers from PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly no. 1
(June 1951), no. 2 (July 1951), and no. 3 (August 1951). The
colors available in the printing of PS magazine were different
from the comics sections Eisner had previously produced,
and the ink and uncoated paper reacted differently as well.
Even among these three covers, there’s evidence of a clear
learning curve to making these ingredients work effectively.
After the first year, Eisner switched the cover stock to a
slicker paper that allowed for more nuanced coloring.
PREVIOUS PAGES, RIGHT

Original art for U.S. Army poster, November 1966.
ABOVE
“The Sad Case of Waiting-Room Willie,” 1950.
A campaign for the Baltimore City Medical Society
argued against the imposition of “socialized medicine,”
ultimately adopted as Medicare.
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Eisner and the people who had been producing it personal interests, such as tennis-themed calendars OPPOSITE RIGHT AND FOLLOWING FOUR PAGES
“The Job Scene” and “You’re Hired!,” 1969. Bringing
on Eisner’s staff, including artist Mike Ploog, who in 1977 and 1978. The ability to apply his wit to people into the workforce was a recurring theme of
would go on to greater fame drawing for Marvel virtually any subject had been polished by decades Eisner’s commercial comics.
Comics. But the new company proved short-lived, of commercial comics and could now be turned to ABOVE
Eisner family album: Will and Ann Eisner with children
and PS went into new hands in 1971. Eventually, create comics that were more important to Eisner Alice and John. Color photos, c. September 1958. Middle
PS would be produced by Joe Kubert, who had the artist than Eisner the businessman. photo, c. 1955.
gone from an adolescent apprentice erasing pages The lasting legacy of the detour into commerce
at Eisner’s studio to being one of comics’ star tal- was not simply the expansion of Eisner’s comfort
ents and founder of his own school for cartoonists. with using comics to communicate beyond the
The Joe Kubert School has been producing PS now short-story format of The Spirit, but also the vital
for over two decades and continues even after its economic freedom it had given him. His success
founder’s death in 2012. in business for over twenty-five years, sustained
Eisner’s remaining operations continued to through corporate mergers and managing a public
go through mixed levels of success and corporate company, left Eisner in a position to consider what
changes, merging in 1971 with Croft Educational. he wanted to do as an artist and as an individual,
Eisner briefly served as chairman before resigning without having to feel the pressures of providing
in 1972, taking Job Scene with him and forming for his family. It was an enviable freedom to have
Poorhouse Press for his new projects, shifting his achieved in his fifties, and he would use it well.
focus yet again. Poorhouse was a smaller, more
personal enterprise, and it allowed Eisner to
continue to produce an eclectic mix of commercial
projects as well as a handful that reflected his varied
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Copyright © 2015. Abrams ComicArts. All rights reserved.

younger, he used to go to a comics store that had an

Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The

PAGES 2 AND 218–21

Kitchen Sink Press, 1985.

his influence has continued to shape the field in the

PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT

PREVIOUS PAGES, RIGHT

Eisner photo album: young Will Eisner

important contributor to the family’s stretched

satisfy both his parents: create art for his father

OPPOSITE AND LEFT

were inspirations for Eisner, fellow students

Kahn—now Kane—had made some sales where

Panels from the detective strip Harry Carey!, 1935.

A nostalgic look back at Eisner’s early characters,

his days. Eisner was ready for something more. Arnold

granting the publishers all rights without even

dard for the syndicate to own the copyright (as

the project moving if Eisner were drafted. An

IGER TRIED TO DISCOURAGE Eisner and

least for a while.

partners, Eisner reluctantly gave his star a mask

and the magician detective. Eisner would write

ON JUNE 2, 1940, Denny Colt made his debut . . .

EVEN WITH THE WORKAHOLIC ethic of the

been impossible for most. Adding in Eisner’s other

OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SEVEN PAGES

of the early artwork from The Spirit was

Eisner’s art grew more solid in every aspect,

grow more and more to encompass an art direc-

OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SEVEN PAGES

Detail, “The Kissing Caper,” The Spirit no. 306,

OPPOSITE AND LEFT

OPPOSITE AND LEFT

OPPOSITE AND FOLLOWING SIX PAGES

On another level, however, it’s possible that

Tales for Juvenile Delinquents.” He turned up the

episode is one of the few manuscripts from

Dr. Fredric Wertham, a leading voice in the

the characters and the format, it’s impossible to

such as General Motors, and they recalled Eisner’s

Regardless of the motivations, becoming a

FOLLOWING PAGES, LEFT AND RIGHT

a publisher. Kewpies; Baseball Comics; The Adven-

MEANWHILE, THE RELENTLESS rhythm

long-term customers are the rarest for a producer to

such as employee training guides. So when the

program in the Eisner studio. “[It] actually helped

developed beyond the ones that actually sold. PS

The body of work produced by American

public company and for a board of directors . . .

it was useful, or if I had a place where it could be

clearly comfortable with what he viewed as the

new blood, and Eisner ultimately decided it was

PREVIOUS PAGES, LEFT

PREVIOUS PAGES, RIGHT

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