Above, we see Will Eisner in his natural habitat: At the drawing board, and probably producing one of the most innovative pieces of comic art of its day, whatever day it was. Eisner, who died Monday evening due to complications following his recent heart surgery, was one of the most important architects of the American comic book…a medium that took life and form about the time he got into it. He was 87 years old but boy, seeing and talking with him at conventions, he sure didn't look it. Didn't draw his age, either. I recall Frank Miller paging through one of Will's recent graphic novels, looking up and saying, "Isn't it embarrassing that a man in his eighties is kicking all our asses?"
I can't improve on the biography of Will posted here so I'll just add a couple of thoughts. Will was among the most envied craftsman in his field…admired for both his skill as a writer and artist but also for having a certain business acumen. The latter skill escaped most of comics' great creators but Eisner had enough to retain ownership and control of most of his creations. He also (and this may not be completely unrelated) never stopped drawing, never stopped pioneering in a field that could and did easily burn out its top talents. We can look at his work from the late thirties and see that it is wonderful and ground-breaking. Then we can look at what he's done the last decade or so, blazing the trail with graphic novels, often on very personal, low-concept subjects…and see that those are wonderful and ground-breaking, as well. Only when you stop and consider that those two bodies of work came from the same guy, and were part of a 60+ year pattern, does his full impact begin to dawn on you.
Like many of my generation, I first heard of Will Eisner in the mid-sixties, when he was away from mainstream comics, producing comic-type material for other venues, most notably the Army. Then his friend and former employee, Jules Feiffer, wrote glowingly of him in The Great Comic Book Heroes, and even included a Spirit reprint to prove Eisner worthy of such praise. Soon after, the Harvey comic book company launched a brief, unsuccessful Spirit reprint book which the guys in my old comic book club all devoured. It was like, Gee, comics can also be this! In 1968, we voted him or that comic some kind of award, and since I was the club's president and had his address, I wrote him a clumsy letter telling him this. Mr. Eisner quickly sent back a polite thanks and at the bottom of his note, he took the time to draw a little sketch, which I just ran through my scanner. It looked like this…
Needless to say, we were all thrilled and when I showed the letter at the next club meeting, a near-riot broke out on the question of whether the physical letter belonged to me or to the club. Somehow — don't ask me how — I managed to get out of that meeting alive and with that piece of paper.
Thereafter, it was a joy to become better acquainted with the man's work and, somewhat later on, the man who'd done it. He was always gracious, always glad to talk about any aspect or era of comics. He favored the future but his memory was razor-sharp about the past, and a lot of us historian-geeks gladly exploited that fact. You could not learn more about comics' past than by talking with Will Eisner, just as you could not learn more about their future than by reading his work.
It is not just a hollow honorific that the major awards in the comic book field are called The Will Eisner Awards. And I'll bet I speak for most/all of those who've won a couple when I say that the best part of receiving one is that when you go up to the stage to get it, Will Eisner hands it to you. Or did. He would always be there to hand you the plaque…always standing. Everyone used to joke that he shouldn't be on his feet for the marathon, drags-on-for-days ceremony; that he should be seated in a throne. One year, Kurt Busiek and Frank Miller (I think) arranged to rent one from a local prop house and early in the festivities, they happily carried it onto the platform.
Will was gracious enough to sit in it and complete the joke…but only for a minute or so. When the next award was announced, he was back in a vertical position to congratulate the recipient, not as royalty but as a peer. You never saw so much perfect symbolism at a convention: A newer generation trying to tell Will Eisner he could rest on his laurels…and Will happily declining. That's how you get to be that age and still produce vital, significant work.
A year or two after that, a Will Eisner award went to…Will Eisner. He won for one of his recent works and the next day, we were joking about how finally, at long last, he had done work that lived up to the standard of Will Eisner. He was genuinely proud to have his name in two places on the award, but I told him he'd missed out on the best part. He didn't get to have Will Eisner hand it to him. Sadly, from this day forward, everyone else who wins one will have to do without.