Will Eisner (46 page)

“Will’s quest in all of this,” said Paul Levitz, “was for the respectability of the medium, not just for himself, but with himself as sort of a Moses: ‘Can I please at least get into the Promised Land?’ This was one of the debates that I had with Will that led to his doing the books [with Norton]. We were half-equipped, and the Nortons of the world were half-equipped: we knew how to physically make a book and reach the core audience; Norton knew how to reach the libraries and how to publicize it in a different environment. I was highly confident that we would reach that point in the next couple of years, but I remember Will sitting there and saying, ‘I’m not sure I’ve got a couple of years.’ That was the irresistible argument for his taking that body of work and going to Norton, and our freeing the backlist for him. We try not to give stuff up, but Will had a unique role in the history of all of it, and he was a total gentleman to do business with, and as long as we were getting something that we could look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘All right, we got a fair value in the deal,’ we had to let him go.”

Norton agreed to reissue Eisner’s graphic novels in volumes designed to look more like traditional trade paperbacks as opposed to the old comic book look. With any luck, Eisner thought, his books might finally escape the comics ghetto and find their way to the shelves of serious literature.

He worked on
The Plot
throughout 2004, assembling the book like a scholarly work of history. He annotated the book, wrote a lengthy introduction giving the history of his involvement in its creation, enlisted Chris Couch’s help on a bibliography, and even put together an index. Meanwhile, Robert Weil contacted Umberto Eco, an internationally acclaimed novelist and comic book fan, to write a preface for
The Plot
. Eisner was delighted when the preface arrived in December. Aside from a few last minute adjustments, the book was ready for publication.

Eisner had been blessed with good health throughout life. At eighty-seven, he still had strength and stamina. He had decent eyesight and a steady hand—both essential to his art. He’d seen talented younger men have to abandon their work because of shaky hands, and it was sad to watch a creative mind hampered by an uncooperative body. He had the usual aches and pains associated with advancing age, but he still took his morning swim and moved about well. If he had a complaint, it was about a damaged right rotator cuff that forced him to give up his tennis game, which had been one of his passions throughout his adult life. His physician had told him that surgery would be necessary to repair the rotator cuff and allow Eisner to continue playing tennis, but Eisner declined, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to work during the lengthy recovery period. He had passed his eightieth birthday at that point.

He was feeling poorly, however, as 2004 drew to a close. He was tired and had shortness of breath, but he pushed himself to complete work on
The Plot
, create a new
Spirit
story for Michael Chabon’s
Escapist
comic book, make notes for and assemble a new instructional book, and conduct his usual day-to-day business. He insisted on finishing the
Plot
and
Escapist
projects before visiting his doctor. He pushed himself until, finally, he had to go to the emergency room. After an angiogram, he was informed that he had serious arterial blockage and needed quadruple bypass surgery.

The surgery, performed in mid-December, initially appeared to have gone without a hitch, but the recovery was slow. Eisner still struggled with his breathing, and after he collapsed while getting out of bed one day, his surgeon decided that another operation was necessary, this time to eliminate fluid that had built up around his heart. As before, the surgery was declared a success, and Eisner hoped to be released from the hospital sometime in early January.

What he and the hospital’s medical personnel didn’t realize was that he was bleeding internally as a result of the surgery, not from a bleeding ulcer, as a gastrointestinal doctor diagnosed. An endoscopy was scheduled for January 4.

January 3 was an eventful day. Eisner had written a highly personal introduction to
The Contract with God Trilogy
, a hardcover gathering of
A Contract with God
,
A Life Force
, and
Dropsie Avenue: The Neighborhood
, in which he wrote about how the death of his daughter had influenced his most famous graphic novel. Robert Weil, his editor at W. W. Norton, had worked on the introduction, and he called Eisner to discuss some of the edits. Weil tried to keep the conversation light, but at one point they discussed Eisner’s decision to talk about Alice in the piece.

“We discussed the autobiographical material about his daughter,” Weil remembered, “and I said I never knew the relevance of
A Contract with God
. He felt it would be appropriate. We spoke about the revelations about Alice, but we didn’t speak at length about the origins. I had some questions about the introduction, but he said, ‘You deal with Denis on that. Denis is great.’”

Weil was impressed by Eisner’s determination to get a clean bill of health and go back to work. “He was tired of the hospital and he was eager to get out,” Weil said. “His voice was clear and very strong. He sounded like Will.”

Later in the day, in the late afternoon, Weil called with news on another front: He’d just heard from Norton’s rights director in Spain, who told him that Grupo Editorial Norma had agreed to publish
The Plot
. Eisner was glad to hear this, first because he liked the Spanish publisher’s editor and enjoyed working with him, and second because Spain was one of those countries with an available edition of
The Protocols
. Eisner hoped that his book would refute any credence
The Protocols
might have in the country. As Weil remembered, it was a good conversation, cut short only when a nurse came in the room and intervened.

Weil was so excited about the prospects of seeing Eisner back at work that he immediately e-mailed Denis Kitchen with a brief account of their earlier conversations.

Will be sending you by overnight tomorrow my edited copy of Will’s gorgeous Contract. When I spoke to Will on the phone at the hospital today, he said he would be delighted that I send you my editorial parts now. From his strong baritone voice and demeanor today, it sounds as if he’s eager to plunge back to his work.

Ann hung around the hospital, as she had on every previous day of her husband’s stay, until both she and her husband needed to get some rest.

“It was about ten o’clock that night,” Ann recalled. “I said, ‘Good night, honey. I’ll be back at eight.’ And two hours later, I got a call. He was dead.”

Eisner had passed away in his sleep.

*   *   *

Obituaries and tributes poured in. The
New York Times
, in a half-page notice that included the high points in his career, noted the value of Eisner’s innovative writing, from his work on
The Spirit
through
P
*
S
magazine and his graphic novels. “His seriousness,” the
Times
writer stated, specifically citing
A Contract with God
, “helped bring mainstream attention to works like Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ and Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis.’”

Following private family funeral services, Will Eisner was buried near his daughter, Alice, in the family plot in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery near White Plains, New York. A plain headstone lists his first name as “Will,” marking the resting place of a man who, in death, would be as unassuming as he was in life. A short time after the private services, a public memorial service was held in Manhattan, where, in a dignified yet casual setting, fanboys mingled with some of the comic book community’s most influential contributors, all celebrating a life that somehow seemed too brief, despite Eisner’s almost eighty-eight years on earth. Such comics magazines as
Comic Book Artist
,
Comics Journal
, and
Alter Ego
published issues devoted to remembrances of Eisner’s life, all agreeing that Eisner’s considerable influence would continue to be felt for many years to come. The 2005 San Diego Comic-Con held panel discussions about the man and his work.

In the years immediately following his death, Eisner was never far removed from the public light. The annual awards bearing his name continued to be given to significant contributors to the comics medium. Bob Andelman’s biography,
Will Eisner: A Spirited Life
, with an introduction by Michael Chabon and an appreciation by Neal Adams, was published within months of Eisner’s death, the first of what promised to be a line of biographies and studies of the artist’s life. Andrew D. Cooke and Jon B. Cooke’s highly anticipated documentary,
Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist
, was released in 2007.
The Spirit
, a theatrical motion picture directed by Frank Miller, hit theaters at Christmastime in 2008.

More significant, Eisner’s own work continued to be published. In an irony that Eisner would have appreciated, his final
Spirit
adventure, the last work he’d delivered before entering the hospital, was published in Michael Chabon’s comic book series,
The Escapist
. Eisner had been feeling poorly while working on the story, but he was determined to drop it in the mail before visiting a doctor.

The Plot
, which might have signaled a new direction for Eisner, had he’d lived to do more work, was published to generally favorable reviews. “His final book combines literary biography and criticism into an activist work striking a blow against anti-Semitism,” wrote
Time
’s Andrew D. Arnold. “Though not without flaws,
The Plot
carries through Eisner’s ambitious legacy to the end.”

Jonathan Dorfman, in a review for the
Boston Globe
, praised
The Plot
’s economy in words and pictures. “It is a testament to Eisner, and his skill in the genre, that he packs so much historical narrative into so few pages. ‘The Plot’ tells the story of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ with a wallop, and makes you writhe in disbelief at how this rubbish has served as a justification for so much political and human wreckage.”

R. C. Harvey, a reviewer who knew Eisner and had interviewed him when he was just beginning his work on the book, called
The Plot
“an unprecedented, pioneering undertaking … an impressive manifestation of this kind of bold venturing … quintessential Eisner.

[I]t is not entirely successful like much of Eisner’s latterday literary endeavor. But, again like most of his work, it dares to go where few, if any, have gone before, and it is therefore typical of the artist’s life-long crusade for the literary status of his chosen medium.

Eisner would have appreciated the care put into publishing the book: a hardcover, dust-jacketed volume, with the introduction by Umberto Eco, afterword by
Protocols
scholar and Rutgers professor Stephen Eric Bronner, and full notes, index, and bibliography. Eisner had spent seven decades charting unexplored territory in the sequential art, and the last book he would complete continued the tradition.

Then, in 2008, W. W. Norton published
Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative
, the instructional book Eisner had been working on at the time of his death. As its title indicated, the book went beyond the kind of anatomical study usually associated with art school. A painter needed to understand skeletal and muscular structure, as well as posture and gesture, for his or her work, but the narrative of sequential art placed additional demands upon the artist. There was movement and changes in facial expression, exaggeration of body language typical of actors onstage. “In this whole process of creating a visual story,” Eisner wrote in the introduction to the book, “the artist functions like a theater director choreographing the action.

The expression of human emotion is displayed by behavior articulated by meaningful postures. Often, to achieve a particular expression the gestures may require distortion or exaggeration. To create an idea of individual personality and physical differences, the knowledge of the anatomical structure and the weight of the human body are most important. If he is going to communicate his ideas effectively, an artist must have a complete understanding of the body grammar of the human figure and how to use it.

At the time of his death, Eisner had written the book’s text, roughed out its layout and design, and chosen a large number of illustrations to use as examples for each of his topics; but there was still much work to do. The book lay fallow for a while during the period of grief following Eisner’s death, while his affairs were put in order. Finally, after some discussion between Ann Eisner, Carl Gropper (Eisner’s nephew, who was now in charge of the Will Eisner Studio), Robert Weil (Eisner’s editor at W. W. Norton), and Denis Kitchen and Judy Hansen (who acted as agents for Eisner’s art), a decision was reached to continue the project. Peter Poplaski was hired to finish the book.

Poplaski was highly qualified for the job. A former Wisconsinite who had known Denis Kitchen for nearly thirty-five years, Poplaski was a gallery painter, cartoonist, writer, archivist, and art historian who, as art director at Kitchen Sink Press, had worked extensively with Eisner, particularly on
The Spirit Magazine
and comic book. He had a large collection of anatomy books to consult, and as both a fine artist and a cartoonist, he understood the distinctions Eisner wanted to make between gallery and cartoon art.

“I wish I had been with him on it from the ground up, because it would have been fun to go over it with him and argue different things. I have an interest in silent movies, so I have an interest in how pantomime and gestures work in communicating a story idea. The biggest omission in the book is he doesn’t really compare feminine gestures with masculine gestures, and because he had these students who wanted to work for Marvel Comics, he starts out with some muscle anatomy to show how to draw superheroes. He doesn’t really get very deep into analyzing the aging process and the whole structure of how anatomy works in that regard. This is where you say, ‘I wish we could have dealt with this.’ It would have been great.