Who's Who in the CBU 2010

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Will Eisner

By Regie Rigby

This isn’t what I had planned for this week, but after the news that broke yesterday there’s only one thing I really want to talk about.

Will Eisner has died, aged 86.

The part of the world that doesn’t read comics won’t even notice, which is a shame, because Eisner deserves the international recognition due to the creative genius he so clearly was. Because there are no plaudits too grand for Eisner. Without him you wouldn’t be reading this, because you probably wouldn’t be reading comics.

Seriously. Even if you’re one of the people who have never read anything he ever wrote, or even if you never heard of him ‘till now. (Although in that case, where have you been?!)

At some [point, somebody got you into comics. It may not have been Eisner, in fact if you’re under forty it almost certainly wasn’t. But somebody did. And somebody got that person into comics. Follow that line long enough and eventually you’ll almost certainly get to Will Eisner.

So, who was Will Eisner, and what made him so important?

To understand what makes Eisner the King of all things Sequential Art (a term he coined don’t forget) you have to go a long way back.

Born in 1917, Eisner grew up in the tenements of New York, and like so many budding comics creators he got his first work published his school paper. I like that, as a trivia fact. From little accords do great oaks grow, and this particular oak grew not just great, but fast. His first pro work appeared in 1936 when he would have been still in his teens. He created two strips for WOW – What a Magazine!, Harry Karry and The Flame. Personally I’ve never read them, and in fact I’ve never met anyone who has, this being largely because they were published nearly seventy years ago in a magazine that folded after a mere four issues.

From our point of view though, this turned out to be a good thing. Far from letting this knock back put him off Eisner took the bull by the horns, teamed up with a friend, Jerry Iger and created the Eisner-Iger Studio. In many ways this is the part that totally blows my mind. He was nineteen, maybe twenty, and he was able to team up with a mate and co-found a studio.

OK, a lot of kids do that. I tried to do it myself when I was in college, in a ham fisted slightly inept kind of way (Hi Burge, if you’re reading). The difference is, the Eisner-Iger studio was a success, the boys in charge proved not just to be good at what they did, they proved also to be a pretty good judge of talent in others. The roll–call at Eisner-Iger included at one time or another the likes of Lou Fine, Jack Kirby (who wasn’t the “King” back then) and most impressive of all from my point of view, a certain Bob Kane.

I mean come on! The man isn’t just a giant, he’s a finder of giants!

I wish I knew more about this era of Eisner’s career, but I don’t, so I don’t really know why the Eisner-Iger partnership broke up. But, after three productive years Eisner left to produce a syndicated newspaper supplement for the Quality Comics Group and it was here that his most widely known and probably best loved creation sprang to life.

The Spirit was the lead feature, a detective adventure strip wholly created by Eisner. He was great. In so many ways Denny Colt is a straight forward two fisted hero. OK, so he wears a mask, but he has no powers, no gadgets, no “Spirit Car”. Just a pure heart and a sense of justice. But there’s a twist. He lives in a graveyard, and he didn’t always win.

Looking back, a lot of the early Spirit stories have dated, as have some of the characters. I can’t see anybody getting away with calling Colt’s young black sidekick “Ebony White”. But this was 1939, and attitudes were different then. I can tell you for sure that those stories measure up to modern scrutiny now better than Kane’s early Batman work, which is my only other reference from the era.

And the art just shines.

Waaaaaay back in 1939 Eisner was producing art that looks fresh and innovative now, sixty five years later. He incorporated titles into backgrounds, he produced some of the most beautiful splash pages I have ever seen. But, it was 1939 and across the seas in Europe the biggest, most hateful war in history was getting started. It didn’t hit the USA until a couple of years later, but in 1942 it caught up with Eisner and he was drafted into the Army.

While working for Uncle Sam he used his talents to produce posters, entertainment strips, and my personal favourite, educational strips.

Then he went back to The Spirit, producing weekly instalments until 1952, although not alone. The thing with The Spirit though is that the character always (for me at least) seemed to suffer at the hands of other creators. Unlike Kane’s Batman, who is a fantastic character who flies when handled by other writers and artist, The Spirit needs a creator with Eisner’s very specific brand of genius.

There was a lot of stuff that came after The Spirit. Under the banner of the American Visuals Corporation he produced commercial art, educational comics, strips for the Army’s P*S magazine, a sports team (I know it was the Baltimore Colts, as it happens, but as a Brit, and a Brit who doesn’t follow team sports – Rugby and Cricket being ways of life rather than sports – I have no idea what sport the Baltimore Colts play) the ‘phone company in New York, to name but a few.

And then he invented the Graphic Novel.

Or maybe he didn’t.

Opinions differ.

One thing is certain though, A Contract With God may or may not be the first thing that we can truly call a “Graphic Novel”, but it is truly amazing, and it is the first thing to be called a graphic novel, because Eisner seems to have coined the term.

Many such stories followed, drawing from Eisner’s early life in the tenements of New York, as well as work in the theory of comics – his Comics and Sequential Art remains for many (including me) the seminal work on the subject.

And of course, there are the Eisner Awards. It seems to me quite fitting that the comics “Oscar” carries the great man’s name. In so many ways Eisner is comics. He was a catalyst for change, for evolution, and most of all, he was an inspiration.

I never met Will Eisner. But I did attend a ‘phone interview he did with the head of the Cartoon Art Trust, one Paul Gravett. It was the first Festival in Bristol, would’ve been 1999 and Gravett had the stage with Eisner’s voice patched through the halls speaker system so we could all hear the conversation. I remember at the time being tremendously struck by the vitality in the octogenarian’s disembodied voice which came at us in glorious surround sound so that he seemed to be everywhere at once. At the time I remarked that it had been a bit like hearing the voice of God.

And it was, you know.

I don’t have the words, I really don’t. The loss is great, too great. You might have noticed that several times I have referred to the great man in the present, rather than the past tense. I was going to correct that, but I’m going to let it stand. Will Eisner is dead, but to steal a line from a friend, I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.