Will Eisner
Will Eisner
William Erwin "Will" Eisnerwas an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spiritwas noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art. The Eisner Award was named in his honor,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
Date of Birth6 March 1917
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.
Superheroes are mostly aimed at young teen-age males concerned with their manhood. The medium will have to address itself more to content. . . . I see 22 year olds draw massive Schwarzenegger types, outfitted with metal studs, pressing a mostly naked woman to their breastplates. And I think Poor girl, thats got to be cold.
I find that no matter how long a meeting goes on, the best ideas always come during the final five minutes, when people drop their guard and I ask them what they really think.
I think when you get inured with the past, you get committed to the past, you stop growing.
Many people you think are individual achievers in fact have either a strong spousal partner over many years or a business partner who's either in the background, not given enough publicity or less egocentric.
There's a fine line between what would characterize you as a troglodyte and what would characterize you as a brilliant, avant-garde, forward-thinking genius. There's some middle ground.
I don't think individual achievement in business is the most meaningful way for it to operate,
Years later, I found myself running a network television division and then a movie studio and now an entire entertainment company. But, much of the success I've achieved can be traced to the direct and metaphorical lessons I learned in building those campfires. I can hardly think of an aspect of my life that wasn't positively affected by my camping experience.
I've spent my whole life working in a medium that was regarded with contempt largely because of historical reasons.
The work we do is as demanding as any of the great painters because nothing that happens on the page of a comic is accidental. It has to be imagined first in your mind before you do it. Those of us who know something about the art of painting know that working on a canvas, very often a lot of serendipitous things happen that work to the advantage of the painter ultimately.
The term "comics" long ago became obsolete and inaccurate. It merely defined the content of the early joke-based comical strips. "Sequential Art" is a more accurate description of the form. I first suggested it because I believed something needed to be done to correct the feeling of inferiority by artists and writers in this field.
I believe that in spite of this courageous, not comic but tragic book by Will Eisner the story is hardly over. Yet it is a story very much worth telling, for one must fight the Big Lie and the hatred it spawns.
I believe that in spite of this courageous, not comic but tragic book by Will Eisner the story is hardly over. Yet it is a story very much worth telling, for one must fight the Big Lie and the hatred it spawns.
Memory is a very amorphous thing. It is selective and shaped by emotion . . . people are constantly in pursuit of the details of their past because it is from that they determine their own identity upon which they can base their strategy of survival.