Will Eisner

Will Eisner (March 3, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an acclaimed American comics writer and artist who is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium. He is known for the cartooning studio he founded, his highly influential series The Spirit, his use of comics as an instructional medium for the U.S. military, his leading role in establishing the graphic novel as a form of literature with his book A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories, and his educational work about the medium as exemplified by his book Comics and Sequential Art.

The Spirit

The Spirit ran in a 16-page insert in the Sunday edition of twenty newspapers from 1940-1952, with a combined circulation of as many as 5 million copies. Eisner's rumpled masked hero (with his headquarters under the tombstone of his supposedly defunct true identity, Denny Colt) and his gritty, detailed view of big-city life (based on Eisner's Jewish upbringing in New York) both reflected and influenced the noir outlook of movies and fiction in the 1940s.

Related Topics:
The Spirit - 1940 - 1952 - Jew - New York - 1940s

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The strip is especially notable in other areas. First, it was the story of people, often the little people overlooked in the city's maelstrom. In many episodes of The Spirit, the nominal hero makes a brief, almost incidental appearance while the story focuses on a real-life drama played out in streets, dilapidated tenements, and smoke-filled back rooms. Second, along with violence and pathos, The Spirit lived on humor, both subtle and overt. He was machine-gunned, knocked silly, bruised, often amazed into near immobility and constantly confused by beautiful women.

Related Topics:
Violence - Pathos - Machine-gun

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Eisner is sometimes criticized for his depiction of Ebony White, the Spirit's African American sidekick. He later admitted to consciously stereotyping the character, but said he tried to do so with "responsibility", and argued that "at the time humor consisted in our society of bad English and physical difference in identity."http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,488263,00.html The character developed beyond the stereotype as the series progressed, and Eisner also introduced black characters (such as the plain-speaking Detective Grey) who defied popular stereotypes.

Related Topics:
Ebony White - African American - Sidekick

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