More than a comic

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From Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, to Marsupilami, Spirou and Fantasio, or from “Bat-” to “Super” and “Spider-Man” – all of them have shaped generations as well as multi-billion-dollar film adaptations, Animated TV series, computer games and products sold. The success of this genre is due in part to an unknown New Yorker in this country: the great storyteller and illustrator Will Eisner (1917–2005). He was way ahead of his time. That’s why comics artists’ favorite award is named after him: The “Eisner Award”, given annually at Comic-Con in San Diego (USA), is considered the comics industry’s Oscar.

Rightly so: oblique perspectives, surprising twists, cinematic sequences of images, complex narratives and surprising perspectives – what is still considered the gold standard for comics today was created by Eisner in 1940.

An extraordinary talent in the right place at the right time

From the mid-1930s, newspaper comics became increasingly popular, especially in the United States. And contrary to his mother’s wishes, young Eisner is right in the middle. His mother is a lifelong illiterate immigrant from Romania, living in abject poverty in Brooklyn. The father fled then-Austro-Hungary as a Jew in 1914 – he wants his son to learn “something legal”. But Eisner draws from his early youth, and as a young man he is in the right place at the right time: Eisner can do any style, any genre you want, and he can do it extremely quickly. When the first complete Superman comic came out in 1938, newspaper comics came under pressure. And so in 1940 a publisher asked him to design a complete supplement instead of a regular newspaper comic. Must be a “-Man” style superhero.

Decades ahead of its time

The only problem: Eisner isn’t interested in superheroes. He wants to tell great stories on par with literature. As an immediate solution, he invents “The Spirit”, a masked crime-fighting private detective – but often lets him remain as the supporting character to tell what really interests him: stories about petty crimes, life in New York apartments, dreams and hopes. ordinary people. And all from unconventional perspectives that set new standards: Eisner dreams of a toy gun becoming real or telling an entire story from the eyelashes of a murderer. Despite the interruption of the war, he writes and draws 625 chapters. The public isn’t that far away: bookstores are overflowing with his comics and they don’t know how to position them, just like comic bookstores selling booklets. Frustrated by modest financial success, Eisner switched to the commercial arts, for example, for education or mechanics.

It was only when he turned 60 that he realized he was never forgotten: Comic book fans had long been collecting his comics at flea markets. An invitation to the first Comic-Con held in San Diego in 1971 shows him respected as a legendary figure, and a meeting with publisher Denis Kitchen initiates Eisner’s second creative phase. Kitchen is rebroadcasting episodes of “Spirit” – and now financially stable, Eisner is getting back to what he really wants: telling stories. In the second major creative phase, he drew a major comic book every year for the last two decades of his life, lectured until he was old, and continued to set the standards.

Exhibition at Cartoonmuseum Basel, 11 March – 18 June 2023

Source : Blick