Will Eisner: A Spirited Life spotted at Skirball!

Michael Dooley shot this photo of books for sale at Skirball in late June. It's always a pleasure to see my biography, Will Eisner: A Spirited Life, in such great company as Michael Chabon (who wrote the introduction to A Spirited Life), Arie Kaplan, Jules Feiffer, Stan Lee, Danny Fingeroth and David Hajdu.

Here's what Michael had to say about the shot:

I went to the Skirball to see ZAP! POW! BAM!

It was partly to familiarize myself with the show if the subject comes up at my SDCC "comics/museums" panel discussion –

Sunday, JULY 26
1:00-2:30 pm
Room 30AB

Comics Arts Conference Session #15: "Comics In Museums —
How do comics bridge the worlds of popular art on the stands and fine art on museum walls?"
Kim Munson (Munson Art Consulting) revisits the 1983 "Comic Art Show" at the Whitney. Michael Dooley (Art Center College of Design) covers two shows, the 1990 "High and Low" exhibit and the 2005 "Masters of American Comics," with emphasis on the works of Kurtzman and Spiegelman. Denis Kitchen (Underground Classics) discusses new trends in museum exhibitions and discusses the just-concluded “Underground Classics” show at the Chazen Art Museum and other shows he has worked on.

I'm sure your book and the others will be available in the Skirball Gift Shop (which is right outside the entrance to the comics exhibit) until the show closes on August 9th.

Thanks again, Michael, for sharing this.

Incidentally, I've interviewed many of the other writers represented in the picture above on "Mr. Media Radio." Check 'em out!

David Hajdu

Arie Kaplan

Danny Fingeroth

Jules Feiffer

(Don't forget: You can now order the audiobook edition at Audible.com!)

'The Spirit' brings 1940s noir comic to the big screen (StarNewsOnline.com)

Michael Chabon image by Getty Images via Daylife

Ben Steelman

Dec. 17, 2008

Of all the Christmas Day movies this year, I'm more than a little interested in "The Spirit," the latest from comic-book-artist-turned-filmmaker Frank Miller. Once again, we'll see those digitized backgrounds and weird mixes of color and black-and-white, as in "Sin City" and "300," Miller's collaborations with Robert Rodriguez.

Mostly, though, I want to see what they do with one of my favorite comic heroes.

I discovered "The Spirit" late, in the 1970s, when a lot of the old strips were finally being reprinted for a new generation of fans. That's when a lot of us first discovered Will Eisner.

Who's Eisner? A cartoonist's cartoonist who never quite reached A-list popularity but was always known to the cognoscenti. Jack Kirby ("The Hulk, "X-Men," etc.) worked with Eisner back in the 1930s, when he was still Jacob Kurtzberg; later a young Jules Feiffer would understudy for him. Michael Chabon quoted Eisner in the epigram for his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and may have used him as a model for one of his cartoonist heroes. Hundreds of other young pop artists studied his work.

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Adaptation of Will Eisner's most famous work will hit the big screen (The Post and Courier)

Cover via Amazon

By Bill Thompson

The Post and Courier

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Say the name Will Eisner, and for many it is like invoking the names of Homer or Picasso: pioneer figures in their fields.

While Eisner's cultural contribution may not be quite so exalted, for millions of readers he is the seminal figure in a publishing phenomenon.

Eisner created the first successful graphic novel, popularizing the term in the process, with the release of "A Contract With God" (1978).

This semi-autobiographical story is credited with revolutionizing the comic book form. Today, the graphic novel is, arguably, America's fastest-growing literary genre. And widely influential. The character of Kavalier in Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning (non-graphic) novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" was inspired to a considerable degree by Eisner's life and career.

Following "A Contract With God" at an age when most of his contemporaries had long since retired, Eisner created more than 20 additional graphic novels and instructional books.

"Will was still very productive near the end of his life," says Carl Gropper, archivist of Will Eisner Studios, Inc., in New Jersey. "I suspect that now that the new movie based on his work is coming out, there will be quite a bit of additional interest in his remarkable career."

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TV Stars * TV Producers * Movie Stars * Movie Directors, Producers, documentary Filmmakers and Screenwriters * Politicians and Political Writers * Stand-Up Comedians * Health Experts * Magazine Editors * Radio Stars * Bloggers, Podcasters and Web Producers * Novelists * Musicians and Music Journalists * Sexuality Experts * Culture and Society Experts * Food Experts * Biographers, Historians and A.J. Jacobs * Athletes and Sports Experts * Photographers * Journalists * Crime Experts * CEOs and Business Experts * Comic Book Creators * Cartoonists * Will Eisner Co-Workers, Friends and Experts

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Michael Chabon's literary call to arms (Ottawa Citizen)

Essays show a dizzying range of influences

Review by Joel Yanofsky
Canwest News Service
July 13, 2008

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
By Michael Chabon
McSweeney's Books, 222 pages, $24

Michael Chabon has made a virtue and a career out of being all over the literary map.

His novels have been inspired by swashbuckling adventures (Gentlemen of the Road), comic books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize) and Raymond Chandler, if Chandler were Jewish (The Yiddish Policeman's Union).

This is eclecticism of a high order. Or it's eclecticism gone bananas. Whichever, the origins and the evolution of Chabon's versatile tastes and talents are on display in Maps and Legends, his first book of non-fiction.

Its 16 literary and personal essays cover a dizzying range of influences from Marcel Proust to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Shecky Greene, Philip Pullman to Philip Roth.

In fact, calling Chabon well-read is like calling Alexander Ovechkin a good hockey player; it's an embarrassing understatement. Chabon is ridiculously well-read. Which, incidentally, puts him in an ideal position to go to bat for writers who have ended up, often unfairly and unfortunately, on the wrong side of literary judgment.

So while Chabon can demonstrate a scholarly detachment in essays on fashionable authors like Pullman or Cormac McCarthy, he is much happier as an unabashed fan.

In the essay Thoughts on the Death of Will Eisner, Chabon compares Eisner, "the father of the graphic novel," to Orson Welles. Both had prodigious talents; both were enormous influences on the generations of artists who followed them.

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