In the autumn of 2003, a year before Eisner died, he came to New York from southeastern Florida, where he had lived since
BuILDINg, A coNtrAct WItH goD, FAMILY MAttEr ,
1984 with his wife Ann. Eisner had a few days of appointments
INvISIBLE PEoPLE, and MINor MIrAcLES — like Fagin, sober
with business contacts such as a publicist for one of his several
works, were stacked next to several volumes of SPIrIt ArcHIvES.
publishers (Doubleday) and a handful of the countless friends he
I expected Eisner to be satisfied, if not delighted, with the way
had made over the course of his six decades as one of the most
his work was represented. He glowered.
revered figures in comics and their Au courANt offshoot,
moaned. “I’m happy that there’s a graphic novels section. But
his custom. (Eisner, who dropped out of DeWitt High School in
that’s not where I want to be. I don’t want my work to be bought
his native Bronx shortly before graduation to help support his
because it’s a graphic novel. I want it to be bought because it’s a
family during the Depression, was welcomed into the club as a
piece of literature — visual literature or graphic literature, maybe.
distinguished leader in his field.) With grey clouds threatening
But I want it to be thought of as literature. I don’t want to be with
promisingly over midtown Manhattan, Eisner walked a few
the super-heroes.” Eisner poked around and saw that the Fiction
blocks up Fifth Avenue to a Barnes and Noble store and hurried
and Literature section was located directly behind the graphic-
in, eager to get stranded. “Let’s find the literature section,” he
novel shelves. there was a display table at the end of the row of
said, and I followed him. As we wandered, we came upon a rack
book cases they shared, and it had piles of copies of PErSEPoLIS,
of graphic novels, where his own books were shelved for sale.
the graphic novel by the young Iranian artist and writer Marjane
Eisner stopped and hunched over to study the covers of the books
Satrapi. “tHAt’S where I want to be,” Eisner announced. “I want
on display. He appeared to be shriveling before me.
to be where that book is — in the area between the comics and
BrucE WAYNE, FugItIvE, uNcANNY X-MEN voL. 3:
CBA V.2 #6
“After all these years, they still put me with Batman,” he
graphic novels. He was staying at the Princeton club, as was
on the top shelf, there were a few copies of BAtMAN:
30
the shelves below, five of Eisner’s earlier graphic novels — tHE
literature. I wonder how that book got there.” the fact is, every one of the seemingly countless graphic
HoLY WAr, and other titles of their kind: hard-bound cousins of
novelists and serious comics artists working today (Satrapi
traditional super-hero comic books. Alongside these were some
included) got where they are largely because of Will Eisner. He
funky, quirky graphic novels, such as Adrian tomine’s oPtIc
was one of the earliest pioneers and primary innovators in the
NErvE and Daniel clowes’ wildly popular gHoSt WorLD.
comics art, a groundbreaking artist and writer of the medium’s
Standing upright in the midst of them all, with its cover facing
primordial days in the mid-1930s as well as half-owner of a prolific
forward, was the latest graphic novel by Will Eisner, FAgIN tHE
and influential comics art studio, Eisner and Iger, at the same
JEW. A sympathetic fictional biography of the Dickens character,
time. (As the company’s creative director, Eisner rejected the
extrapolated from oLIvEr tWISt, fleshed out through Eisner’s
original proposal for Superman as “amateurish” and sloughed off
imagination and historical research, and shorn of the 19th-century
its teenage creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, to another out-
novel’s anto-semitism. FAgIN was a quiet, earnest book, its
fit that would become Dc comics; seven decades later, he was
drawings rendered in soft brown ink lines and wash; there was
still dismissing Superman and his innumerable descendants as
nothing quite like it in Barnes and Noble’s graphic-novel’s sec-
something beneath his lofty view of the comics’ potential.) By
tion, there being little like it in contemporary comics. on one of
1939, Eisner had created his first masterpiece, tHE SPIrIt.
PREVIOUS PAGE: Panel details from, respectively, Will Eisner’s The Spirit and his graphic novels. ©2005 the Estate of Will Eisner.