In Eisner/Miller, Charles Brownstein’s joint interviews with Will Eisner and Frank Miller, the cartoonists note that many of their predecessors considered themselves entertainers. It wasn’t until the current generation that comic book writers and illustrators — Miller, Chris Ware, Seth, the Hernandez Brothers, et al. — started to think of themselves as artists.
As the form began to be contemplated as art, I guess, that made the practitioners artists.
Early on in the book, Eisner talks about how he did his own lettering for Contract With God — all of it — and Miller suggests that “was really a departure.”
“I was more mature” by then, Eisner replies, “and I had something to say.”
“You got to us. We started regarding ourselves as novelists. It’s as if you said ‘These’ll be permanent.’”
And thus was born the graphic novel and graphic novelists. Let there be light.
See my earlier posts on Eisner/Miller: A One-on-One Interview here and here.
Eisner/Miller is a lot like Francois Truffaut’s famous 1967 book, Hitchcock, in which the two brilliant directors discuss everything from acting to camera angles. (Cameron Crowe tried to imitate that remarkable conversation in his 2001 book of interviews with Billy Wilder called, of all things, Conversations With Wilder.)
In Charles Brownstein’s insightful interviews, the two successful writer-illustrators range freely over the comic book landscape:
“To me, inking is sexy,” Will Eisner muses. “… It’s like downhill skiing.”
“Especially brush (sic),” Frank Miller adds. “… The brush is the most erotic tool you could work with. … It’s like alchemy.”
But, speaking of sexy, they never get around to what I’ve long wondered about: How the heck are you supposed to pronounce the name of P’Gell, the Spirit’s famous femme fatale? Pah-Gell? Pig-El? Pah-Jill? Or maybe like Place Pigalle in Paris, where late-19th century artists trolled for models? Je ne sais pas.
More to come: Eisner and Miller talk about the invention by you-know-who of the graphic novel. Find your way to my earlier post on this book by clicking here.
