Write Now! #20 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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FOCUS ON

FRANK MILLER

F I S I NA SU L E!

695

In the USA

#20

Spring 2009

WILL EISNER

MICHAEL USLAN

COLLEEN DORAN

M AG A Z I N E Issue #20

SPRING 2009

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief .....................................................page 2 THE SPIRIT SECTION begins on page 3 He Dared Evil on a Dark Knight Interview with Frank Miller ................................................................page 4 Keeping the Faith Interview with Michael Uslan ............................................................page 6

THE SPIRIT NUTS & BOLTS Thumbnails to Pencils to Script to Finished Comic: WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT #24 Pages from “Veterans’ Benefits,” by Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin and Wayne Faucher..............page 18

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief

Producing Results Interview with F.J. DeSanto ..............................................................page 25

Managing Editor ROBERT GREENBERGER

Odd Lot Perspective Interview with Deborah Del Prete ................................................page 30

Consulting Editor ERIC FEIN

Not-So-Secret Agent Interview with Denis Kitchen ..........................................................page 32

Proofreading ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON

Will Eisner and the Art of Adaptation N.C. Christopher Couch looks at a pair of Spirit stories........page 36 The Spirit of Comics! Interview with Will Eisner (re-presented from Write Now! #5)..............................................page 43 On the Creator’s Life: Interview with Colleen Doran..........................................................page 51 Being Discovered… Again… and Again… and Again… Alex Grecian on breaking into comics—several times ............page 65

Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Thumbnails to Pencils to Finished Comic: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 Pages from “Flashbacks,” by Marc Guggenheim, Barry Kitson and Mark Farmer ................................................................................page 60 “But What Does Danny Think?” Danny Fingeroth sums up seven years of Write Now! ..........page 69 Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers ................................................page 71

Designer DAVID GREENAWALT Transcriber STEVEN TICE Circulation Director BOB BRODSKY, COOKIESOUP PRODUCTIONS

Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: ALISON BLAIRE TOM BREVOORT KIA CROSS DEBORAH DEL PRETE F.J. DeSANTO WILL EISNER MARK EVANIER DAVID GREENAWALT KATE HUBIN STEVE KANE DAVID HYDE ADAM KERSCH DENIS KITCHEN JACKIE KNOX JIM McCANN FRANK MILLER ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON CHRIS POWELL BEN REILLY ALEX SEGURA VARDA STEINHARDT STEVEN TICE MICHAEL USLAN STEVE WACKER

Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! is published 4 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Fax: (919) 449-0327. Danny Fingeroth, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Write Now! E-mail address: WriteNowDF@aol.com. Single issues: $9 Postpaid in the US ($11 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $26 US ($44 Canada, $60 elsewhere). Order online at: www.twomorrows.com or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com All characters are TM & © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorial package is ©2009 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a shared trademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

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READ Now ! Message from Danny Fingeroth, Editor-in-Chief As you may have heard, this is the last issue of this magazine that so modestly bears my name in its logo. It makes me think of the joking observation that was old when Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer character makes it in 1977’s Annie Hall. He compares romantic relationships—and life—to a restaurant of which a complaining patron says: “The food here is terrible—and such small portions, too!” So while getting out each issue of WN was always way more work than I’d anticipated, I was almost always proud of the finished results. And now that the magazine’s seven-year run is over, it seems like it went by in a flash. “Such small portions,” indeed. Sure, WN will continue to be available in digital form and as print back issues from the TwoMorrows website. And I’ll still be hawking issues at conventions. There may even be some kind of continuing web presence with new material. But WN as we’ve known it is no longer to be. But, hey, there’s still this issue. Let me tell you about it… The recent Spirit movie has put everybody in a Will Eisner state of mind. Not that anybody doing comics doesn’t always have Will looking over their shoulder just a little bit, but especially now, when the winter days are short, and ragged newspapers blow through the dark, cold city streets, and people shiver from the pelting force of the precipitation known as “Eisenshpritz”… Where was I…? Ah, carried away by the atmosphere that comes along with many a Spirit story… Anyway, this issue of Write Now! focuses on the Spirit: the character, the comic, and the movie. (And there’s some extremely cool non-Spirit stuff, too.) We lead off with interviews with movie folks: writer/director Frank Miler, producer Michael Uslan, co-producer F.J. DeSanto, and producer Deborah Del Prete. The interviews each add important insights on how Eisner’s unique comics vision was translated into (especially of interest to Write Now! readers) a screenplay and then, of course, a movie. The saga of how The Spirit got made is an incredible story all by itself. Then, we speak to Eisner’s longtime friend and publisher Denis Kitchen. Denis tells us how he came to work with Will, and what he learned from the relationship. We also have an article by Eisner–scholar N.C. Christopher Couch about a little-discussed aspect of Will’s Spirit stories: those that were adaptations of classic short stories. Eisner has spoken about how certain short-fiction authors were great influences, and here, Mr. Couch shows us how Will homaged them via The Spirit. 2 | READ NOW

Back in 2003, two years before his passing at age 87, I had the honor of interviewing Will for issue #5 of this magazine. I knew him casually, but had never before had the chance to speak to him at such length about his art and craft. There’s a lot to be learned from what he has to say in the interview, and I thought it was the perfect thing to have in an issue dedicated to his work. We’ve also got an excellent Nuts & Bolts section featuring script and pencil pages from a recent issue of DC’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit by Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin, and Wayne Faucher. These guys beautifully bring the Spirit’s comics adventures into modern terms. As for the excellent not-Spirit material, we’ve got an inspirational interview with writer-artist Colleen Doran, who tells us how she creates work like A Distant Soil—and how she deals with the realities of the art and the business aspects of comics. Then, Alex Grecian talks about how his writing career got going and how his and artist Riley Rossmo’s Image series Proof came to be. And in another nifty Nuts & Bolts section, we’ve got some exciting script and pencil art by Marc Guggenheim and Barry Kitson from Amazing Spider-Man #574! Hope that’s enough. If it isn’t, what are you going to do— stop buying the mag? But seriously… thanks to everybody who’s been there for Write Now! these past seven years. But before we start blubberin’, why don’t you enjoy this Spirit-centric issue of Write Now!—and then join me in the last few pages where I get to look back on WN’s history and thank all sorts of people and try to figure out some profound words to exit on. Write Away! Danny Fingeroth Editor-in-Chief

LAST MINUTE SHAMELESS HYPE: Did I ever tell you about my books Superman on the Couch; Disguised as Clark Kent; and The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels? Oh, I did? Well, no need to mention them again, I suppose… —DF

While the impetus for focusing on the Spirit in this issue of Write Now! was the recent Frank Miller-directed movie, I never need much of an excuse to spread the word about Will Eisner and his creation. The things Eisner discovered, invented, interpreted and demonstrated over his long career are every bit as relevant to established and aspiring comics writers and artists today as they ever were. In the pages that follow, we hear from some of the key people behind the movie (Eisner-fanatics all); from a few of the creators on the current run of Spirit comics; from Will’s longtime publisher and friend; from a critic who has given eye-opening attention to Eisner’s work; and, finally, from the Master himself, via an interview I was fortunate enough to be able to do with Will in 2003. Eisner called the comics supplement he supplied to newspapers The Spirit Section, and that seemed an appropriate title for this series of features that follows. I hope you enjoy Write Now!’s own “Spirit Section.”

—Danny Fingeroth

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He Dared Evil on a Dark Night:

THE FRANK MILLER INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail by Danny Fingeroth December 4, 2008

RANK MILLER changed the way comics are done, starting with Daredevil, moving on to re-vision Barman in The Dark Knight Returns. Other triumphs for the writerartist included Martha Washington, 300, and, of course, Sin City, which was turned into a sleeper-hit movie which he codirected. A longtime friend and colleague of [© 2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.] Will Eisner, Miller was the natural choice to bring The Spirit to life as its writer-director.

Frank took a few minutes to give us talk to us about the character and the film… —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first discover The Spirit, Frank? Which characters and strips appealed to you? FRANK MILLER: I first discovered The Spirit when I was on a bicycle when I was 14 years old picking up comic books and discovering the works of Will Eisner who I thought was a new guy who was blowing everybody else out of the water. Then I discovered it was all written and drawn before I was born. So yeah, that’s how I discovered The Spirit. My favorite characters were the Spirit himself, Commissioner Dolan and Sand Saref.

The first The Spirit movie poster. Art by Frank Miller. [© 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]

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DF: Please talk a little about your process of using art from the Spirit comics to do storyboards. How did you go about picking stories, scenes and characters? How did you come up with the idea to do that in the first place? FM: I drew my ass off. I did not use Eisner’s artwork except as inspiration for the director of photography and for the crew and for the actors. But I did not

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Sergio and Mark are longtime collaborators (on Groo and many other projects). Here’s how Mark describes their working process for this particular story: “Sergio made up a storyline and wrote it out in his way. Sometimes, when we work together, we discuss the plot in advance and sometimes, we don't. The Spirit has generally been one of the ‘don't’ cases. I’ve had almost no input into any of the stories before they're drawn.

“Sergio’s version was sent to the editor, Joey Cavalieri, who sent it to the artist, Chad Hardin, and I got a copy either from Joey or Sergio. Chad penciled it his way, then turned it in to Joey, who sent the art off to the inker and a Xerox of the pencil art to me. Once I got it, I hauled out my copy of Sergio’s breakdown and used it as a guide to help as I composed copy to fit what the artist had drawn. I think I had to phone him once or twice to ask about certain story points.”

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Mark continues: “When I was done with the dialogue, I uploaded it via e-mail to Joey and FedExed him a copy of the pencil art with balloon placements indicated.

“After the lettering was done, the letterer e-mailed me a PDF and I did some proofreading and I think I rewrote a couple of things at that stage. I sent my changes to Joey, he sent me a check and that’s about it.”

So Sergio’s thumbnails are the equivalent of a written plot. Penciler Chad has freedom to vary camera angle and so on as he proceeds through the story.

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PRODUCING RESULTS:

THE F.J. D E SANTO INTERVIEW

Conducted October 27, 2008, in person, by Danny Fingeroth Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, F.J. DeSanto, and Bob Greenberger

.J. DeSANTO is co-producer of The Spirit movie. He has a number of motion pictures currently in development including The Shadow (Columbia Pictures) which he is co-producing with Michael Uslan, Sam Raimi and Josh Donen, Shazam (Warner Bros) with Peter Segal directing, Doc Savage (Branded Entertainment), Sabotage (iNDELIBLE Entertainment), and Loony (iNDELIBLE Entertainment). Also, he co-produced the animated directto-home DVD Turok: Son of Stone (Classic Media) which was distributed by the Weinstein Company. In 2005, he served as an assistant to the producers of Constantine (Warner Bros). He has been responsible for acquiring, developing and maintaining a large slate of projects based on comic books, graphic novels, manga and anime while also overseeing deals with writers, agents, comic book companies, creators and movie studios. Before joining iNDELIBLE Entertainment in 2008, he was the Senior Vice President of Production and Development and Producer for Comic Book Movies Inc., and spent nine years as Vice President of Development for Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker (Executive Producers of the Batman franchise). F.J. is also a comic book and manga writer. He has written an original manga based on Star Trek: The Next Generation for TokyoPop, for release in 2009, and is a cowriter (with Michael Uslan) on an arc of The Spirit for DC Comics. He is currently developing several graphic novel projects for 2009. I spoke with F.J. in his iNDELIBLE Entertainment office in October, where we talked about the creation The Spirit movie, as well as many other topics. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: You have an interesting overall take on The Spirit movie, F.J. Please share it with the Write Now! readers. F.J. DeSANTO: The movie, to me, feels like, if Frank Miller were to do a Spirit graphic novel, this would be it. It’s filtering Eisner through his eyes and pen—you’ll see frames of it that look exactly like something Frank drew, and that’s exciting.

DF: Tell me a little bit about the origins of the movie. FJD: Michael Uslan can give you the better details, but when I started working with Michael, which was at the end of ’94 or the beginning of ’95, he had just gotten the rights from Will. Because of the success of Batman, Will understood that Michael had the proper love and understanding of The Spirit. As a kid, I’d always see the character at conventions and stuff, but never knew much about him. But then, obviously, being in an office with Michael, there were comics, and I spent a good portion of my first couple months there just reading everything, starting with The Spirit Casebook, and then the Warren Spirit reprints Those were my education. The Spirit Casebook is huge. This is the Kitchen Sink book, and that’s what Michael would use a lot of, because the story “Ten Minutes” was in it, and a lot of the other main Spirit stories. From that point on, I watched Michael for years trying to set this movie up, from the time I started as his assistant, and then eventually his head of development, and then the head of production. When I was pitching it myself to places, I was amazed at the complete lack of understanding people would have of the character. But we pitched it actively for a long time. And, believe me, people made offers. There was a prime-time animated series offered by

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THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION a big studio. But again, there were all these little caveats like, “You’ve got to make him a ghost,” or, “You’ve got to put him in spandex,” and it was just literally, “Nope,” and we’d just walk away. And this had been going on for ten, twelve years.

DF: What else has Odd Lot done? FJD: They did a great movie called Green Street Hooligans with Elijah Wood. There was a Jennifer Lopez movie, The Wedding Planner and some other movies. DF: How did Frank become attached to the movie, and then did he throw out everything you had and come up with his own story, or did he work with what you guys had been working on? FJD: We had always been under the impression that Frank was going to go do Sin City 2, but suddenly he was available. And then Michael had the first conversation with him, and it just sort of snowballed. It happened very quickly.

DF: Did you guys have an “elevator pitch,” a short summary of the concept you could give people? FJD: Michael did it best by telling them the story of “Ten Minutes,” because it embodied the tone and feel of Eisner. And there was a Sand Saref story. We xeroxed certain stories together, like Sand Saref, to show the best of The Spirit. But the pitch was very simple: “the greatest work in the history of comics, the Citizen Kane of DF: Did Will have any input on early comics.” It was just always presentversions of the story? ed that way, always presented as a FJD: Will had passed away before Green Street Hooligans was an Odd Lot proguy who has no superpowers, who duction that featured a post-Lord of the Rings Frank came onboard, but we had is a middle-class superhero, possibly Elijah Wood. [© 2009 the copyright holders.] spoken with him about the film. He the first Jewish superhero. That was was very much like, “Ah, do whatevhow we pitched it, the average guy protecting his neigher you want.” But at his last San Diego Comic-Con, in July borhood. 2004, myself, Michael, Deborah Del Prete, and Linda McDonough, who’s the other co-producer, along with me, DF: Had many of the producers you pitched to heard of on it—we sat with Will, because we had just finished our the Spirit or Eisner? deal with Odd Lot, and started talking to him. We were FJD: It’s interesting. Michael would call this era “the just announcing the project. Jeph Loeb was originally Golden Age of comic book movies,” and it is. But I would involved, but then he went through that horrible tragedy say, in my 15 years with Michael, the first five years was with his son’s death, and he had to back out. So we sat convincing studio people that the comic book was an down with Will, and the only thing he was really adamant acceptable form of source material. And then you had Xabout was, “Don’t make it a period piece.” That was the Men and Spider-Man. People went, “Oh, these comic only time he sort of got agitated, and he specifically said, books are great.” Everybody wanted a comic book proper“Whenever I wrote and drew anything with the Spirit, it ty, but it had to be a superhero. So that was the next five was of its time. If you go back and look at it, it was always years. And the last five years is when it sort of blew wide contemporary.” That was the one thing he was really firm up. People became open to stuff like Road to Perdition. about. “What else, Will?” “Do whatever you want.” “Hey, there’s comics-based stuff that’s not superheroes.” So to the studios now, a comic book is a piece of source material that’s no different than a novel, a play, or a newspaper article. And now you have guys my age—mid-thirties—guys who are now execs, and who now have that understanding about comics, who look at Eisner and the source material as something to be revered. DF: So obviously, a Spirit movie this was in the works long before Frank was involved. FJD: We went down the road with a bunch of writers. We went down many different avenues. But just, look, this business is silly. A lot of it’s fate, a lot of luck, a lot of it’s putting the pieces together. It really took off once we partnered with Odd Lot, because it gave us the freedom of an independent company getting behind it and putting it together, as opposed to just, we’re going to set it up at a studio. 26 | WRITE NOW

DF: So the story as it appears on screen, where did that originate? FJD: It’s a culmination of Frank knowing what he wanted to do, and then we all discussed it. Everything previous to Frank coming on board was out the door. It was all from scratch. Frank very much knew from the start it was going to be about Denny Colt and Sand Saref. Michael and I had a lunch with Frank in midtown when we first started talking about the movie, and he had all these ideas. And I remember another lunch with Frank—it was me, Deborah, and Linda. They were in New York doing a film, and we met at a restaurant in Madison Square Park, and Frank came, and he had stacks of photocopies of Will’s comics. He started shaping the story by going through the Will stuff. Later, I’d get calls from Frank’s office—because I was

N THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION work on the movie, we mostly discussed what he didn’t want. The Spirit should never carry a gun for example and I made sure we kept to those wishes. As far as Frank goes, we went through many permutations and much fine-tuning of the story, but it was always about Sand Saref and The Octopus. One character that was barely there originally was Silken Floss, but after Frank met Scarlett Johansson, he expanded the role and her interaction with the Octopus, which gave them much more humor.

DF: How did the script—and the movie—evolve from your initial meetings with Will and with Frank, to the finished movie? DDP: When I met with Will before we had Frank to

DF: Would you ever want to do movie adaptations of Will’s later, more personal work? DDP: I think it will be unlikely because they are basically straight dramas, which isn’t the type of films I’m focusing on now.

THE END

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NOT-SO-SECRET AGENT:

THE DENIS KITCHEN INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail by Danny Fingeroth December 18, 2008

enis Kitchen began his career in 1968 as a selfpublished underground cartoonist, leading to the formation of his pioneer publishing company, Kitchen Sink Press. For thirty years he published creators such as R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Scott McCloud, Dave McKean, Mark Schultz, Howard Cruse, Justin Green, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns. During these years Kitchen Sink won industry awards far disproportionate to its market share, and sometimes more than any other publisher. In 1986 he founded and for eighteen years served as President of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization dedicated to defending the industry’s First Amendment rights. Since the demise of Kitchen Sink in 1999, he has diversified his activities. He is a partner with designer John Lind in Kitchen, Lind & Associates and with Judith Hansen in Kitchen & Hansen Agency, literary agencies representing prominent comic artists and writers. He has expanded Denis Kitchen Art Agency (founded in 1990) into an entity exclusively offering original work by Eisner, Kurtzman, Capp and other clients. Here, Denis takes some time to answer my questions about his unique relationship with Will Eisner. —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first become aware of Will’s work, Denis? DENIS KITCHEN: I was too young to have seen the original Spirit newspaper inserts. I first became aware of Will’s work when Harvey Kurtzman featured “Bring Back Sand Saref” in his Help! magazine #13 in late 1961. I was fifteen and pretty damn impressed. I don’t think I saw anything else until Harvey Comics published a two-issue Spirit experiment in 1966. By then I certainly wanted to see more, but there was no organized fandom, no reprint programs, no way to even figure out how many Spirits there were. It was a complete vacuum except for a handful of fans doing mimeo zines, and I wasn’t in that tiny loop. 32 | WRITE NOW

DF: How did you first meet Will? DK: I started drawing my first underground, Mom’s Homemade Comics, in 1968, and successfully selfpublished. Then I started publishing others, the beginning of Krupp Comic Works (later Kitchen Sink Press). Phil Seuling, the impresario of the earliest comic book conventions, became aware of my small Midwest operation around 1970. Phil began distributing Krupp’s titles and also hired me to do custom cartoons for his catalogs and flyers. He invited me to be a guest at his summer 1971 convention in New York City. It was my first and, it turns out, Will Eisner’s first convention as well. I was rummaging through back issue boxes like any other fan when Maurice Horn, a French comics historian, saw my name tag and said Will Eisner was looking for me. I assured him he was mistaken, but he insisted on taking me to meet Will. We met in a private suite and, after quick formalities, Will expressed intense curiosity about underground comix: their distribution, the freedom, the royalty system, etc.

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Denis worked closely with DC on their just-concluding Spirit Archives hardcover collections. On the left is the cover art to #25, which collects the entire run of the little-seen 1941-44 Spirit daily newspaper strip. On the right is the cover art to #26, which features Eisner’s post-1952 Spirit material. Both covers, of course, are by Will. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

artists. Probably my most satisfying involvement is curating or providing original Eisner art for exhibitions— there have been roughly 20 since Will died. Sometimes his work has simultaneously been in three or four exhibitions, often overseas: recently Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Athens. Next year his art will be in Brussels and Poland, among others. It’s a shame that Will didn’t live to be the centenarian most of us expected; virtually all of his work is in print, the Eisner Awards are going strong, there’s The Spirit movie and merchandise in the works, and art traveling around the world. He’d be pleased that interest in his life’s work continues to grow. DF: Anything else you’d like to say about upcoming Kitchen projects? DK: Well, despite so much happening with Will’s legacy, I actually am involved in other things! I recently coauthored a book with Paul Buhle, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, for Harry N. Abrams’ new ComicArt imprint this spring. It includes a ton of images that have never before been seen. Harvey, like Will, was a great friend and mentor, so doing a book about his career was intensely satisfying. It was sad, though, in reviewing his career to see how Kurtzman never quite achieved the

success his talent and influence would imply. I also just co-authored Underground Classics with James Danky, another book on Abrams’ Spring 2009 list, connected with a traveling exhibition Jim and I co-curated, consisting of 50-some underground cartoonists. It debuts at the Chazen Museum in Madison in May. On a personal artistic level, coming full circle, I have a sketchbook in the works and in late 2009 or early 2010 Dark Horse is publishing The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen, a career overview. My partner John Lind designed or was involved in the design of all the books I’m mentioning here. And then there’s my 11-year-old daughter Alexa, whose third book, GrownUps are Dumb! (No Offense) will be published by Disney/Hyperion this summer. With those projects, representing a couple dozen clients and estates with two different partners, and packaging other books, there’s not much time for loafing. DF: Thanks, Denis! DK: My pleasure, Danny.

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WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF

by N.C. Christopher Couch

ADAPTATION

ike most creators, especially of popcontent for newsstand comic books. The ular culture, Will Eisner’s Spirit studio had been very successful, producstories would often reference ing lots of memorable properties and well known works of fiction as well making Eisner remarkably financially as celebrities from all fields. Eisner successful for one so young; he startwas saturated in the works of O. ed in comics at age 18, and was Henry and Guy DeMaupassant, only 25 in 1939, when he left the among many others, as well as studio to create The Spirit. Of in the popular radio, music, and course, he couldn’t turn out a movies of his time. Part of the three-feature weekly comic book by fun of reading The Spirit is himself, especially since he was also catching Eisner’s cultural refermanaging the enterprise. He essenences. (“Awesome Bells,” for tially organized a new studio, and he instance.) In a few cases, though, and Iger worked out an amicable Eisner made a point of adapting agreement about which artists might specific stories to comics form in the follow him, and which would stay with context of a Spirit tale. Here, comics his former partner. If The Spirit somehow scholar N.C. Christopher Couch examfailed, then Eisner would be in an excellent ines those cases, and along the way position to return to packaging content shows us how Eisner used his literary N.C. Christopher Couch by James Barry. for comic books. In fact, as it turned [© 2009 James Barry] influences to inform The Spirit in out, “The Spirit,” “Lady Luck” and other general. It’s a great insight into Eisner, and into the art features created for the comic book supplement were and craft of comics writing in general. Enjoy! later reprinted in a variety of Quality comic books. After Eisner returned from service in World War II, his Spirit —DF studio was used more and more to produce licensed comics, including P*S Magazine for the Army. Eventually When Will Eisner was offered the opportunity to create Eisner dropped The Spirit altogether to concentrate on his own weekly comic book as a newspaper supplement this kind of contract work, which was much more profin 1939, he jumped at the chance. He would suddenly itable in the booming postwar American economy (and have the same kind of autonomy that many newspaper post-Wertham comics industry) of the 1950s, the period strip artists enjoyed—the comic would be circulated by a that Henry Luce called “The American Century.” syndicate, and overseen by comics publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold, but effectively Eisner would be his own If Eisner was doing so well in creating original material editor and publisher. The proof would be in the pudfor comic books, why did he move on to doing a comic ding—if the supplement was successful, if enough newsbook newspaper supplement? There was no hint in 1939 papers bought and kept it to make a nice profit for all or 1940 that comic book sales were going to do anyconcerned, then it was a success. But it would all be in thing but grow. (Later in his career, Eisner would say, Eisner’s hands. He would create the lead feature—The “I’ve seen this industry die three times!”, but there was Spirit, of course—and oversee the backup stories that no hint of that then.) The explanation Eisner has offered would fill out the book. most often is that he wanted to create comic books for readers who were more intellectually adult than those Before starting The Spirit, Eisner sold his interest in attracted to comic books. But why did he expect to find the Eisner & Iger Studio to his partner, Jerry Iger, and such readers among the consumers of newspaper effectively abandoned the business of creating original comics? Weren’t these also read by children? The stereo36 | WRITE NOW

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The Spirit of Comics!

THE WILL EISNER INTERVIEW

Conducted via telephone March 26, 2003 by Danny Fingeroth Transcribed by Steven Tice / Copy-edited by Will Eisner This interview first ran in WN! #5. It seemed appropriate to represent it in this Eisner-centric issue. It stands up to—and actually gets even better with—repeated readings. Enjoy! —DF

rom the dust jacket of the hardcover The Spirit Archives, currently being published by DC Comics:

“Will Eisner’s career spans the entire history of comic books, from his formative days in the 1930s through the 1940s, when he revolutionized narrative sequential art with his internationally famed series, The Spirit, to the 1970s, when he created the contemporary graphic novel form. In addition to his award-winning graphic novels, he is the author of the influential study Comics and Sequential Art.” Or, as Dennis O’Neil says in his introduction to DC’s upcoming The Will Eisner Companion by Chris Couch and Stephen Weiner: “Will Eisner is an Artist.

“He has a vision of the human condition and the means to communicate that vision to us. It is essentially a tragic vision, though not a morose one, and that may be why he no longer does melodrama; in the world that Will has been presenting for the last quarter-century, problems are not solved by violent action and big, fluffy endings are impossible. This is our world, focused and purified and magnified, displayed for our amusement… “There aren’t many analogies, either inside or outside cartooning, for what Will does. We’re not discussing caricature here—rather, something like caricature’s smarter older brother, a graphic strategy that not only exaggerates the exterior but uses exaggeration to suggest the interior.” To which allow me to add: Will is one of the few titans about whom it can truly be said that, without him, there would be no comics artform and no comics industry. It was one of my life’s honors to conduct this phone interview with him. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview, Will. What are you working on right now? I know you’re in the middle of a project. WILL EISNER: I just completed a book that Doubleday is publishing called Fagin the Jew. It will be published in September, I believe. I just sent off the final art the day before yesterday. DF: That’s not part of the DC Library? WE: DC lost the bid on it. They wanted it, but Doubleday made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. DC always gets “first look” at any graphic novel I do. DF: And are you starting something new now? WE: Well, I always have... I have a file here that says “do me now.” [laughter] I’m just starting another book now. DF: My understanding is that you don’t like to talk about projects you’re working on. WE: I generally don’t, and the reason for it is it dilutes itself if I talk about it, because while I’m working on it, I’m developing ideas and so forth. It just dilutes itself in my mind. DF: At this point, how many hours a week do you devote to work? WE: I work pretty steadily. When I’m not traveling, I work from nine to five. DF: Wow. WE: Every day, five days a week. DF: What, you take the weekends off? How dare you? [laughs] EISNER | 43

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION T back to doing The Spirit, by 1950 I realized I had done all I wanted to do on The Spirit, and the opportunity to expand into teaching material with sequential art presented itself. So I started a company producing instructional material in sequential art, or comics, as you might call it. It lasted for about 25 years, and then in 1972, ‘73, I stumbled into Phil Seuling’s conventions and discovered that the underground artists—I’m talking about Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman and Spain Rodriguez and Denis Kitchen and a couple of others—were really using comics as a pure, literary form, in that they were addressing the establishment mores and morals of the time, and that encouraged me to go back to the area where I wanted to spend my life, which was producing comics or sequential art for adult readers, with grown-up subject matter. DF: Now, the stuff you’d been doing in the interim twenty years was in comics format but in an educational milieu? WE: Yes, what you might call the comics format. Actually, it was the sequential art format. It is the arrangement of images in a sequence to tell a story, and whether you do them on three tiers or two tiers, with nine or six panels to a page, is irrelevant. It’s how you arrange the images in an intelligent and readable sequence to convey an idea or tell a story that is really the heart of the definition, if you will, of what I want to do. And in 1975—or ’76, I guess, somewhere in there—I began doing what I believed was a novel form addressed to adult readers. And out of that came A Contract with God. DF: You’d always aimed at adult readers, even with The Spirit. WE: Yes. Writing for young readers was one of the problems that I had during the Eisner and Iger Studio years, and one of the reasons I went in for The Spirit—which was quite a gamble at the time, for various reasons. I wanted to talk to an adult audience. A newspaper readership would give me that. I was always very impatient talking to the very young readers. I didn’t really know what to say to them. [laughs] DF: You mean talk to them beyond just the basics of superhero action/adventure? WE: Well, candidly, superheroes are one-dimensional characPencils for a page from Will Eisner’s graphic novel A Contract With God. ters. You can’t do very much with them. And life experiences This art is among the unpublished pieces to be printed in Dark Horse’s upcoming are filled with story material. Everybody’s concerned with surhardcover volume The Will Eisner Sketchbook. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] vival and the life experience is concerned with that and how WE: My wife says Saturday and Sunday are her days. to deal with it. So it’s a wide-open area, there. DF: Well, that seems to work for you. I’m going to ask you a DF: Now, in different hands, these can be very bleak subjects, bunch of questions that range from the pretentious to the but you certainly seem to do them joyously. picayune. So if there’s anything that you think is too stupid to WE: Well... that’s an interesting point you just made, calling answer— them “bleak.” Every once in a while people do say to me, WE: I’ll give you stupid answers. “Your stories are bleak” or “there’s a noir quality to them.” DF: Thank you. [laughs] Well, okay. You’ve been doing comics That’s French, you know. [laughter] I don’t see it that way. First and graphic storytelling for an amazingly long time and your of all, I’m not a moralist. I’m not really writing books to define stuff is still wonderfully fresh, innovative and exciting. Would human morals. I consider myself doing reportage, reporting to you say there is an overall theme or purpose or direction in my fellow man the things I see. I see a man lying in the street, your work, from the beginning to now? Or has it changed nobody paying attention to him is something I want to turn to over the years? my fellow man and say, “Hey, look at that, look at that. He’s WE: Well, the direction has always been to explore areas that lying there, nobody’s paying attention.” The other thing is, I haven’t been explored before. I guess that’s the way to put it. think it’s necessary to explore the purpose of life. That’s what I believe that this medium is a literary form and that it has not drives us in living. In one of the books I did, there’s a story been used as fully as it could. So all of my experience, all the called “The Big Hit.” At the end of the story, I have this one things I’ve been involved in since 1950, certainly, have been guy saying to the other fellow, “Living is a risky business.” an effort to employ this medium whose language is sequenReally, the whole business of living and survival is very much a tial art—that’s the medium that we’re talking about—in areas part of how we think as human beings, so if you can talk that it had not tried before. For example, when I was in the about that, it has resonance, it means something. It’s useful. military between 1942 and 1946, I realized that the medium What I want to be is useful, obviously. is usable as a teaching tool, very effective as a tool. So I sold DF: Do you think that focus, that direction, comes from the the military on the use of that. It was very successful. I went Depression era and World War II era experiences? 44 | WRITE NOW

ON THE CREATORʼS LIFE:

THE COLLEEN DORAN INTERVIEW Conducted via e-mail by Robert Greenberger November 2008

ob Greenberger says:

“Colleen Doran has been a writer, artist, illustrator, teacher, mentor and activist since breaking into the comics field as teen. Today, she is also an influential blogger and a general straight shooter. I first met Colleen at the beginning of her career and we’ve remained friends ever since but this was our first real chance to explore many of her influences and feelings about the business.” To which I’ll add that I’ve had the pleasure of moderating convention panels on which Colleen has been a participant, and her contributions to them always impressed me with her hard-thought opinions and her ability to defend them clearly and passionately. I’m extremely pleased she agreed to sit down and talk to Bob for Write Now! —DF

BOB GREENBERGER: Hi Colleen. Thanks for taking the time to chat. It’s pretty amazing we’ve known each other over 20 years. You’ve certainly come a far way. Your interest has always been more fantasy than science fiction or superheroes, was it that way from childhood? COLLEEN DORAN: I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. The first comics I ever read were superhero comics, and I developed a love for comics because I had a big crush on Aquaman! Aquaman comics were the first I ever bought, and when I made my first money, I got subscriptions to Justice League and Adventure Comics, starring Aquaman. My intention was to draw superhero comics eventually. I was in fan clubs and doing APA zines for superhero comics. I always liked them. BG: Well, I stand corrected. How did you discover comic books? CD: Well, when I was very little, we lived in a fairly poor city neighborhood, and I found some comics under the bleachers at school. I held on to them for dear life. And I would pick bottles out of the trash to redeem them for money to buy comics. But when I was really young, we moved out to a small town where there were no

stores and certainly no comics. And I think my parents threw my comics out, including my carefully saved Sunday Prince Valiant strips clipped out of the newspaper. So, I went for years with no comics, and kind of forgot about them. Then when I was 12, I got very sick with pneumonia, and a family friend brought me a big box of comics, and I was deliriously happy. I was hooked and never looked back! Almost all of them were Marvel superhero comics, but there were some DC Comics in there as well. I read them until they fell apart. BG: What led you to pursue a career as a writer/artist? CD: I won an art contest sponsored by Disney when I was five. I thought I would go to work for Disney. And my mother had been a classically trained artist. She was very supportive and used to give me books about art, and she gave me drawing paper. My father used to COLLEEN DORAN | 51

give me all his old papers from college to draw on. Almost all of my early drawings are on the back of university exams. I wasn’t entirely certain it was the sort of thing people did for a living. I entertained thoughts of becoming a doctor or an astronaut along the way. BG: If I recall correctly, you’re largely a self-taught artist. Was there ever any formal training? CD: Yes, but not until after I had already become a pro. Of course, I had some college, but a couple of years ago, I took some time off to take art classes at an art school—mostly digital classes. I really didn’t get much from the classes themselves, but from the time I got to devote to doing work just as a training exercise. I had not had time to simply study in years. BG: How did you make that essential first sale? What lessons can others learn from that experience? CD: I went to a science fiction convention and saw they had an art show. I was 15. I thought I could do some work as good as what I saw in that show. So, I went home that night, and my mom cut some mats for my drawings and we put them in the show. And I sold some pieces. Also, a lady named Linda Wesley had a small advertising agency, and she saw my work in that show and gave me a job. I guess the lesson is, just get out there and put your work in front of people. No one will find you if you are sitting in a corner being insecure about whether or not you are any good. BG: A Distant Soil was conceived when you were 12. Is it the same story today? CD: No, of course not! If it were everyone who read it would run screaming from the comic shop. Maybe they still do, but they are too polite to let me know. BG: You broke in in the early 1980s when there were very few women illustrators. What was harder, being a teen or a woman?

CD: Well, I’d say being a teen, because 15-year-olds are not women, they are children. Nothing is harder than having to face abuse and discrimination when you don’t have the faculties to understand it, or to handle it. I think I would have handled everything I experienced with a lot more savvy had I been ten years older. As a matter of fact, almost all of the serious problems I ever had in the business occurred before I was 21 years old. Bullies are abusive to people who can’t fight back, and when you’ve got some middle-aged editor or publisher abusing you, it’s a very intimidating thing for a kid. No one pulls that kind of nonsense on me anymore. I still have occasional problems with this or that client, but an adult knows what their rights are, and I can just pick up the phone and ring my attorney now. A child does not even know they’ve been taken advantage of sometimes, or blames themselves for their problems. Perhaps getting into the business so early was an advantage in one way, because I do meet some clueless 30-year-olds who can’t seem to stand up for themselves, or are incapable of reading a contract. Maybe I got my school of hard knocks out of the way early, but it’s not an experience I would wish on a kid. I only regret not confiding in my parents more about some of my problems. I was trying to protect them, because I was concerned about lawsuits and stuff. I had one publisher threaten to sue my family if I left the company, because my family was acting as my management. That was very intimidating to me as a kid. Now I know that publisher was full of crap, and I did eventually leave them. I just didn’t know what my rights were, and tended to blame myself when things went wrong. BG: You avoided DC and Marvel and managed to land A Distant Soil with WaRP. Was this your dream project? CD: I didn’t avoid DC or Marvel at all. As a matter of fact, I was offered a chance to try for a Legion of Super-Heroes gig by Keith Giffen when I was a teen fan of the Legion and working on an APA zine devoted to the comic. I was in several fan clubs, and often went to comic conventions with superhero art in my portfolio. However, I had signed a letter of intent for A Distant Soil with a small press, and had to Hal Foster’s classic Prince Valiant strip was inspirational to the young Colleen Doran. [© 2009 King Features Syndicate.]

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