Will Eisner

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Will Eisner, 1982

William Erwin Eisner (born March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn , New York City ; died January 3, 2005 in Fort Lauderdale ) was an American illustrator of comics and had a decisive influence on their development in the 20th century. Eisner introduced the term “ graphic novel ” (illustrated novel) and shaped the style of many comic artists.

biography

Eisner had Jewish parents. The mother came from Romania and the father from Austria; he worked as a set painter at the Jewish theater . The son contributed to the family's livelihood by selling newspapers. He published his first comic book, which was about poverty in the Bronx , in a school newspaper in 1933. He attended the Art Students League of New York , which he had to leave again at the age of 19 due to financial difficulties.

From 1936 he drew for the magazine Wow! What a Magazine the comics Captain Scott Dalton , The Flame and Harry Karry . Together with his colleague Jerry Iger , he founded the Eisner & Iger studio to produce and sell comics himself. Bob Kane , Mort Meskin and Jack Kirby worked for the studio, among others . In 1939 it received the order for a 16-page comic book that was distributed as a newspaper supplement. The first issue appeared in 1940 and received, among other comics, the first episode of Eisner's own series, The Spirit . He separated from Iger in order to devote himself mainly to the further development of The Spirit .

The Spirit

The Spirit was published from 1940 to 1952 as an eight-page post with other series in the above-mentioned Sunday comic supplement. Eisner was heavily influenced by film and therefore experimented with numerous creative means, such as shadows and unusual angles. Since he did not want to commit himself to one genre, The Spirit is a detective novel , love story , mystery , horror , drama and comedy at the same time, but also has clear parallels to Dick Tracy and Batman . The series set itself apart from other publications of the time because of its graphic and narrative quality. After the series was discontinued, Eisner worked for a while as an illustrator for the United States Army and the Department of Labor.

Graphic novels

Eisner published four stories from a tenement house with Jewish residents in 1978 in the book A Contract with God , which was published by a small literary publisher. He referred to the book himself as a graphic novel on the title page and in the foreword . This is followed, among others, by the works The Dreamer from 1986, the autobiography To the Heart of the Storm from 1991 and Dropsie Avenue , published in 1994.

In the 1980s and 1990s Eisner also processed several classic novels, including Moby Dick , in comics. In 2002 Sundiata , the story of a West African king, was published . In The Conspiracy , his last work, Eisner traced the history of the impact of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , a fictional text that purports to document a Jewish conspiracy to gain world domination. It was Eisner's main concern to reveal the character of the "Protocols" as an anti-Semitically motivated forgery.

Will Eisner died on January 3, 2005 after a four-fold bypass operation.

Instructional comics

In 1942, Will Eisner was called up for military service and was entrusted with the design of army newspapers. In Army Motors magazine , he drew comics that were intended to make soldiers aware of the proper handling of military equipment and safety regulations. The most famous character from this period is Joe Dope, who served as a clumsy negative example.

But even after the Second World War, Will Eisner continued this type of explanatory comic and from 1950 drew for the magazine PS, the Preventive Maintenance Monthly , the successor magazine to Army Motors . The troop leadership tried again and again to discontinue these comics in favor of normal instructions for use. However, research has shown that Will Eisner's instructional comics had greater learning success with readers than the usual dry descriptions.

Awards

  • Eisner received the US National Cartoonist Society Comic Book Award in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1987 and 1988, the Story Comic Book Award 1979 and the highest recognition, the Reuben Award in 1988.
  • In 1975 he received the second Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême , the most important European award in comic art.
  • In 1979 Eisner was inducted into the Academy of Comic Book Arts Hall of Fame and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1987.
  • In 1988, US publishers launched the Eisner Award . This is one of the most important prizes that a comic artist can be awarded with.
  • In 1994 Will Eisner received the Max and Moritz Prize for his life's work.

Works

comics

  • Captain Scott Dalton
  • The Flame (1935-36)
  • Harry Karry (1935-36)
  • Scrappy
  • Yarko the Great
  • ZX-4 / Spies in Action
  • Uncle Otto
  • The Diary of Dr. Hayward
  • Inspector Drayton
  • Hawks of the Seas (1936-38)
  • The Black Hawks (1940)
  • The Spirit (1940–1952) ( Der Spirit. Will Eisner's Spirit Archive . Volume 1 to Volume 19. Salleck Publications 2002–2013 (Reprints) ISBN 3-89908-080-7 etc.)
  • Job scene
  • Hoods Up
  • P * S Magazine (1951–1972)
  • The M16A1 Rifle - Operation and Preventive Maintenance, June 28, 1968, US Government Printing Office 1968 O - 312-642
  • Gleeful Guide to Communicating with Plants to Help Them Grow (1974, German communication with plants , 1980 at Volksverlag )
  • Gleeful Guide to Living With Astrology (together with Ivan Klepper , 1974, German Leben mit Astrologie 1980 at Volksverlag)
  • Gleeful Guide to Occult Cookery (with Ivan Klepper, 1974)
  • How to Avoid Death & Taxes ... and Live Forever (1975, German How to avoid death and taxes ... and live forever in 1981 when People's Publishing)
  • A Contract with God (1978), German: A contract with God and other apartment house stories from New York , 1980 at Two Thousand One
  • Bringing up your Parents (1980, German living with your parents 1990 at Boiselle & Löhmann )
  • Signals from Space / Life on Another Planet (1983/1995, German Signals from Another World 1983 at Carlsen Verlag)
  • The Dreamer (1986)
  • New York, The Big City (1986), German: New York and other big city stories , translated by Matthias Wieland; Carlsen Verlag, Cologne 2010 ISBN 978-3-551-75045-7
  • The Building (1987, German under the same title 1990 at Feest)
  • A Life Force (1988, German Lifeforce 1988 at Feest)
  • City People Notebook (1989, German under the same title 1989 at Feest)
  • The White Wale (1991, German illustrated children's classics, Volume 3: Moby Dick 1998 at Ehapa )
  • To the Heart of the Storm (1991, German To the heart of the storm 1992 at Feest)
  • Invisible People (1993, German Invisible People 1993 at Feest)
  • Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood (1995, German South Bronx, Dropsie Avenue 1995 at Feest)
  • Family Matter (1998)
  • The Princess and the Frog (1999)
  • Last Day in Vietnam (2000)
  • Minor Miracles (2000)
  • The Name of the Game (2001)
  • Sundiata: A Legend of Africa (2003)
  • Fagin the Jew (2003)
  • The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005, German The plot. The true story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion 2005 at the DVA )
  • Life Pictures Carlsen , Hamburg 2011, 480 pages, ISBN 978-3-551-73438-9

Non-fiction

  • Eisner, Will: Comics & Sequential Art . Poorhouse Press, Tamarac, Fla. 1985, 157 pp., Numerous. Fig., ISBN 0-9614728-1-2
    German: Tell with pictures. Comics & Sequential art . ComicPress Verlag, Wimmelbach 1995, 157 p., Overw. Ill., Graf. Darst., ISBN 3-929093-05-7 (Eisner gives vivid insights into the art of comic drawing and imparts profound knowledge about pictorial symbols, time, frame, anatomy, conception, etc.)
  • Eisner, Will: Graphic Storytelling. The Definitive Guide to Composing a Visual Narrative . Poorhouse Press, Tamarac, Fla. 1996, 164 p., Mainly illustrated, ISBN 0-9614728-2-0

literature

Web links

Commons : Will Eisner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Meetings
Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas C. Knigge : Comic-Lexikon . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. 1988, p. 175, ISBN 3-548-36554-X .
  2. ^ Andreas C. Knigge: Will Eisner . In: Ders .: 50 classic comics. Lyonel Feininger to Art Spiegelman . Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 2004, page 107, ISBN 3-8067-2556-X .
  3. ↑ Andreas Platthaus (Ed.): Will Eisner (Classic of comic literature; Vol. 13). FAZ Institute , Frankfurt / M. 2005, page 10, ISBN 3-89981-094-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Eisner, Will
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eisner, William Erwin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic book artist
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York City
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2005
Place of death Fort Lauderdale