A BIRTHDAY SALUTE to the late comics titan…
By JASON CZERNICH
Will Eisner was born on this day in 1917 and is considered by many to be the most influential creator in the comic-book medium—arguably eclipsing Harvey Kurtzman and possibly even Jack Kirby for this honor. His career started in the earliest days of the form and spanned almost seven decades. In the last half of his career, Eisner released a series of acclaimed graphic novels, including Dropsie Avenue, A Contract with God, Fagin the Jew, To the Heart of the Storm, and many others. Eisner never slowed down and was releasing new works of sequential art up until 2005, the year he died.
In November 1998, N. C. Christopher Couch, co-author of DC Comics’ The Will Eisner Companion, organized “The Graphic Novel: A 20th Anniversary Conference on an Emerging Literary and Artistic Medium” at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to commemorate the publication of Eisner’s A Contract with God in 1978, a work that popularized the term “graphic novel.” Chris was also a professor of comparative literature at UMass, and I took both of the comic-book history courses he taught at the time. He was also a senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press in Northampton, Mass., and edited the installments of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell that were published there.
Chris was generous enough to offer me a spot on the student panel, where a few others and I presented some of our favorite graphic novels and explained why they were good examples of what could be done with the format. I chose Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, because of its experimental nature.
On the second day of the conference, Eisner gave the keynote speech, and I got to meet him briefly later that day. He was avuncular in demeanor, which probably was what earned him the nickname “Uncle Will” whenever he visited the offices of Kitchen Sink Press, his main publisher at the time. I consider myself very fortunate to have met him and to have spoken at a conference honoring his work in graphic novels.
Presented here is the conference program, with some signatures and sketches I acquired during the Words & Pictures Museum reception on the second night of the conference, including those of painter Dave Dorman, author Craig Shaw Gardner (who wrote the novelizations of Batman ’89 and Batman Returns), and even Eisner himself.
I hope you enjoy this artifact from a special time and place where people gathered to tell Will Eisner how much his work meant to the world of comics and to celebrate the graphic novel art form he helped pioneer.
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MORE
— NEW YORK as Only WILL EISNER Could Show It: A Birthday Tribute. Click here.
— DARWYN COOKE: The WILL EISNER Stories Every Fan Should Read. Click here.
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JASON CZERNICH was born smack dab in the middle of the Bronze Age of Comics. Early memories of Power Records and other Batman merchandise, as well as watching reruns of the 1966 Batman series on TV38 in Boston, imprinted on him heavily. Today, he lives and works as a clinical social worker in central Massachusetts with his wife, child, cat, and beloved French bulldog.
