American comic book artist (1917-2005). He was born in
Brooklyn on March 6, 1917 and grew up in the
slums and
tenements of
New York City. He attended
DeWitt Clinton High School in
the Bronx, where his love of
art was encouraged by his teachers. After getting a few
cartoons published in the
school newspaper, Eisner was able to get his first
professional work into a comic book called "
WOW What a Magazine!" in 1936. He created
Harry Karry and
the Flame for WOW, but the magazine was cancelled after only four issues.
Soon after WOW stopped publishing, Eisner and a friend named
Jerry Iger formed the
Eisner-Iger Studio, which produced a large number of
comic strips in the hopes of getting some of them into newspapers -- one of their few successes was a seagoing adventure strip called "
Hawks of the Seas." The studio employed several artists who would eventually become comics legends, including
Jack Kirby and
Bob Kane. The partnership with Iger ended in 1939 after Eisner joined
Quality Comics Group to produce a syndicated 16-page
newspaper supplement which would contain three color comic features and would be distributed across the
United States. The lead feature that Eisner created for the "Comic Book Section" was an
adventure serial called "
The Spirit."
Eisner's feature was unbelievably
popular, and the whole supplement was soon renamed "The Spirit Section." The Spirit was a
Central City detective and
reporter named
Denny Colt who occasionally put on a
suit and a
domino mask to go out and beat up (and get beat up by) criminals. Eisner's work was
groundbreaking -- his stories were highly
cinematic, and he used techniques (like artistic
splash pages, dramatic "camera" angles,
atmospheric lighting, and
creative storytelling) that were not used in most other comics.
When Eisner was drafted during
World War II, he ended up making
posters, comic strips, and other
illustrations for the
military. When he got back to civilian life, the Spirit had fallen on
hard times at the hands of less capable
cartoonists, so Eisner reintroduced the character and retold his
origin in 1945 and, with the help of artists like
Jules Feiffer and
Wally Wood, soon returned the strip to its former prominence.
Eisner continued work on the Spirit 'til 1952, and he continued to
innovate on the strip, sometimes creating
simple stories focusing on
normal, non-
crimefighting folks and sometimes diving into
freewheeling fantasy and
science fiction.
Eisner also founded the
American Visuals Corporation, a commercial art company that produced illustrations for
educational and
commercial organizations. AVC produced material for the
Army, the
Baltimore Colts,
RCA Records,
New York Telephone, and others, and the company was
successful enough that Eisner eventually chose to devote most of his time to his company, rather than to
comics.
Interest in the Spirit was rekindled in the 1960s, and some of the strips were reprinted. Eisner created some new material for the
reprints, but didn't feel much
enthusiasm for them -- he believed that, as an artist and creator, he had moved beyond the Spirit and wanted to create some comics that he felt were more
mature. As a result, he ended up creating a book called "
A Contract with God" in 1978 -- the four
short stories were
moral tales set in New York in the 1930s, and the book is considered by most critics to be the first
graphic novel. Eisner followed up with a series of graphic novels including "
The Dreamer," "
The Building," "
Life on Another Planet," "
Invisible People," "
A Family Matter," and "
To the Heart of the Storm."
Eisner also taught classes in
art and
cartooning at the
School of Visual Arts in New York and wrote two of the best books around on comic art -- "
Comics and Sequential Art" and "
Graphic Storytelling." One of the most prominent awards for comic books -- the
Eisner Awards -- is named for him in recognition of his
influence on the genre. And for decades, Eisner himself was the man who stood on the stage and presented each winner with their award. When
J. Michael Straczynski received a 2002 Eisner award, he said, "You know, you get the Emmy, you don't get it from Emmy. You win the Oscar, you don't get it from Oscar. How freakin' cool is this?"
Eisner died on January 3, 2005, due to complications from
quadruple bypass heart surgery. His last graphic novel -- "
The Plot," focusing on debunking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- was released in 2005.
Research from http://willeisner.tripod.com
http://www.lambiek.net/eisner.htm
http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Eisner.htm