Adrian Tomine & Will Eisner

Two quick items of note. (I’m still packing for our move to Iowa.)

First, this from a press release I just received from Drawn & Quarterly about Adrian Tomine’s appearance Feb. 09, 7 to 8 p.m., at my favorite bookstore, the Strand in Manhattan:

A loose, cartoony departure from Adrian Tomine’s previous work, Scenes From an Impending Marriage is a sweet-natured, laugh out-loud skewering of the modern marriage process, including hiring a D.J., location scouting, trips to the salon, suit fittings, dance lessons, registering for gifts and managing familial demands.

Leanne Shapton, author of The Native Trees of Canada and Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, will join Adrian on the Strand stage.

You can read my posts on an earlier Tomine graphic novel, Shortcomings, here and here.

Also this from the Daily Cartoonist, about the people who bring you the wonderful Festival of Cartoon Art in Columbus ...:

The Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation has pledged $250,000 over five years to support the new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum facility, part of the Sullivant Hall renovation at Ohio State University. In recognition of this gift, the library’s seminar room will be named in honor of Will Eisner. The Eisner Family Foundation gift will be matched dollar for dollar by Jean Schulz, widow of Peanuts’ creator Charles M. Schulz, giving it a $500,000 impact on the project. Ms. Schulz has promised to match donations to the new facility up to $2.5 million.

The Sullivant Hall renovation is estimated to cost $24.4 million and is scheduled to be completed in 2013, at which time Sullivant Hall will house the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum as well as The Ohio State University Department of Dance and the Department of Art Education. Upon completion of the Schulz Challenge, the Sullivant Hall renovation will be completely funded.

Read more here.

Feiffer on Diane Rehm radio show

On this morning’s broadcast of The Diane Rehm Show on NPR, cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer was asked by a call-in listener whom he would cite as being as inspirational among today’s cartoonists as Will Eisner had been for him.

Feiffer, on air to promote his book from this past spring, Backing Into Forward, immediately claimed G.B. Trudeau was still at the top of his game with Doonesbury.

But newspaper strips, he added, were an endangered species, with graphic novels being where one can see excellent examples of sequential art today.

Feiffer noted the usual suspects — Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware. But he also lauded David Small and his Stitches and Craig Thompson for his Blankets. Which is interesting as the two look somewhat similar, with their soft brush strokes, and both are memoirs of less-than-cheery childhoods.

But both books are well worth reading and admiring.

2010 Eisner Awards

Winners of 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards of note — well, to me, at least, and readers of this blog — presented at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego include:

• Best Adaptation from Another Work:
Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter, adapted by Darwyn Cooke (IDW)

• Best Comics-Related Book:
The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle (Abrams ComicArts)

• And Vault of Midnight comic book store — I’ve followed it in its various locations around Ann Arbor, Michigan, over the years, and I stop in every time I’m in town — won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award.

The Hunter

Darwyn Cooke, who revived Will Eisner’s The Spirit a few years back, perfectly captures the tone of early 1960s Camelot, with its cocktails and cigarettes, hour-glass-shaped willing women and Space Age hotel exteriors — at least, that world of fictional tough-guy detectives — in his adaptation of crime writer Donald E. Westlake’s The Hunter.

In smoky, moody blues and deep blacks, the protagonist Parker, eyebrows perpetually cocked, pounds the urban pavement as well as his urbane enemies, leaving gorgeous “dames” panting after him — assuming they’re still breathing at all when he leaves them. Listen and you can hear the Miles Davis soundtrack.

The story certainly isn’t populated with Salvation Army types. But these characters grab us (hopefully not by the throat) and stick with us.

“I just got rid of the woman with the bag. I haven’t killed any of these jokers yet, but the next one I will. And if the money doesn’t show, you’re next.” Krak! Bam! Hunf!

Eisner/Miller, Part 3

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, Part 2

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.

Eisner/Miller, Part 1

Last week CBS re-ran the Big Bang Theory episode featuring the gang meeting Stan Lee. The Marvel exec has a cameo toward the end of the story.

But the best touch, I think, occurred when one of the protagonists had to appear in traffic court, rather than going to the comic book store where Lee was signing books. The camera lingered on the judge’s nameplate long enough for us to get the point — his name was “Judge J. Kirby.”

I remembered this in-joke when I was reading Charles Brownstein’s Eisner/Miller: A One-on-One Interview. Amidst the discussions of problematic dialog balloons and color headaches, Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit and the graphic novel itself, among other things, notes in the section called “Talking Out of School” that he’s “delighted to see at long last that (Steve) Ditko’s getting credit …” for co-creating Spider-Man.

Frank Miller, author and artist of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, points out Lee wrote a New York Times article that finally gave tribute to the reclusive Ditko. Miller adds that Jack Kirby, too, was never “as exposed as Stan Lee was.”

The reason? Miller suggests “writers are often the ones who talk history the best. People who draw for a living tend to have less free time … and artists tend to be less articulate.”

Excelsior.

More on this book to come.

Magnus, Robot Fighter

Among the samples given out on Free Comic Book Day this past Saturday was a preview combination edition of Magnus, Robot Fighter and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom, with release dates of Aug. 04 and July 14 respectively.

The connection between the two comics, aside from both using commas in their titles, is they initially were owned by Gold Key Comics. The relaunches are from Dark Horse Comics, and the previews were written by Jim Shooter.

I recall adoring the art of the original 1960s Magnus, by Russ Manning. (I wasn’t the only admirer, of course, as there’s a Russ Manning Most-Promising Newcomer Award given out as part of the Will Eisner Awards.) His characters posed with the handsome grace of Grecian gods; when they moved — to run or to punch or karate-chop evil robots — he drew them as if they were statues, carved in the act of their heroic deeds (not dissimilar to Greg Land’s technique, though Land’s characters appear as if they’re cheerily posing for Rolling Stone covers).

Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter is available in collected editions.

The Magnus preview given out on Free Comic Book Day was illustrated by Bill Reinhold. His robot fighters aren’t from the same polished school as Manning’s. But they do seem to move around a lot more.

Stitches Nominated for Eisner

David Small’s Stitches has been nominated for a 2010 Will Eisner Award, for best reality-based work.

You can see the list of nominees here, on the Graphic Novel Reporter site. My post on Small’s presentation in Michigan last autumn can be read here.

Other 2010 Eisner Award nominees on whom I’ve written recent posts include:

• The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, in the best publication for children category and in the best archival collection/project-comic books category

• Bill Willingham’s Fables in the best-continuing series category and Willingham himself for best writer

• Incognito, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, in the best limited series or story arc category.

Backing Into Forward

In his new memoir, Backing Into Forward, cartoonist, author and playwright Jules Feiffer recalls how he landed a job, without pay for the longest time, right out of high school in the legendary Will Eisner’s studio. But, Feiffer says, while he remained a great admirer of his hero’s work, “… by mid-1947, (The Spirit comic strip) wasn’t what it had been. I found myself increasingly let down by Will’s story writing.”

Knowing no fear, Feiffer, now all of 18, mentioned this drop-off in quality to his boss. To his surprise, Eisner replied, “‘If you think you can do better, why don’t you try your hand at one?’”

So, channeling Eisner, he blended in other influences — his own Bronx childhood as well as then-popular radio dramas such as The Adventures of Sam Spade, Detective. Eisner perused Feiffer’s first eight-page layout, with its “crude sketches and dialogue,” then said, “‘This is good, we’re going to use this. Write more.’”

“And I wrote more.” Young Feiffer was off to the races.

Jules Feiffer

Backing Into Forward, a memoir by cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer, comes out next Tuesday.

You know him. Pulitzer Prize-winner Feiffer is the author of the razor-tongued play Little Murders and the ground-breaking 1971 movie Carnal Knowledge (with Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret and Art Garfunkel) and creator of all those cynical-but-silly Playboy and Village Voice “Ode to spring” cartoons. He’s also written a wheelbarrow-full of children’s books as well as the excellent reference touchstone, The Great Comic Book Heroes, a copy of which I’ve treasured for decades.

And, of course, he apprenticed to Will Eisner.

In a perfect world, we’ll learn much about this incredibly influential artist — what he thinks, how he works — as we did about Charles Schultz from reading David Michaelis’s 2007 biography, Schultz and Peanuts. We can hope.

Read my post on Will Eisner’s The Contract With God here.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, Part 2

But wait, there’s more to recommend The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: Many pages are devoted to Kurtzman’s sketches, overlays and layouts he put together for collaborators to use for their drawings. It’s a fascinating study in how good magazine and comic-book illustration — and art editing —used to be done.

The bio itself follows Kurtzman’s many attempts to control his destiny. He was the creator and the brains of MAD (and he’s the one who had the brilliant idea of taking it from a comic book to a magazine format), but he didn’t own it. He tried his own business ventures, involving humor and/or satire publications, but none succeeded. Unlike, say, Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit (see “The Creator,” posted earlier), Kurtzman’s business sense didn’t hold a candle his artistic sense, the authors say.

Here’s one example: When in 1956 Kurtzman demanded legal control of MAD, owner Bill Gaines countered with an offer of a 10% equity share. Kurtzman walked. Five years later Gaines sold the popular magazine for $5 million. Kurtzman would have made $500,000.

This is a jam-packed book, rich with tales of the time and Kurtzman’s wonderful work. It shows us why the Harvey Awards are named for him.

See my earlier post on this book here.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, Part 1

Illustrator Dave Gibbons says when he and writer Alan Moore started to think about Watchmen, they agreed they wanted their super heroes to look like “Superduperman,” a comic-strip feature created back in 1953 for MAD magazine by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood. (Sickly Clark Bent, assistant copy boy for the Daily Dirt, has an unrequited crush on Lois Pain, girl reporter. But he has no better luck as a costumed crime fighter. “So you’re Superduperman instead of Clark Bent! Big deal!” Lois proclaims after smacking him silly. “Yer still a creep!”)

That Gibbons and Moore picked a silly comic hero for their tragic outlaws isn’t that surprising. Everyone borrowed from Harvey Kurtzman or were inspired by his work, in one form or another. Just ask Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Terry Gilliam or Harry Shearer ….

Testimony to this can be found in The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhl, published this summer. It’s the kind of biography Kurtzman deserves — it’s as much picture book as narrative. It includes the abovementioned “Superduperman” feature along with lots of other art and writing samples from MAD magazine, plus pages from Kurtzman’s other well-known creation, “Little Annie Fanny,” which ran in Playboy from 1962 to 1988.

But even better: This book shows his early work from the 1940s, plus examples from Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, war-themed comic books for EC Comics that eschewed the then-standard gung-ho heroics for stark realism and often frightened protagonists.

To be continued …

The Creator

In the beginning, Will Eisner created The Contract With God, and he proclaimed it good. He called it a “graphic novel.”

Eisner was already famous for The Spirit, and he’d achieved success in both newspaper comic strips and comic books — he’d even created comic-book packages to bundle into newspapers. (See willeisner.com.) But in 1978, he wrote and drew The Contract With God, about the residents of a Bronx tenement at the fictional 55 Dropsie Avenue.

In the introduction to a later edition that also includes A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue, the rest of the trilogy, the artist recalls how he coined the phrase “graphic novel” in “a futile effort to entice the patronage of a mainstream publisher.” He figured “novel” sounded better than “comic book.” (Eisner also came up with the term sequential art.) The rest is history.

These stories, taken from Eisner’s childhood memories, are occasionally funny and almost universally sad. They relate the Great Depression-era woes of frustrated mothers and wives and cheating husbands, ungrateful children, out-of-work bankers, sinister gangsters, golddiggers, worn-down rabbis, anti-semitic building superintendents, faded divas and alcoholic singers, as well as that of Izzy the cock-a-roach, as they all try to get on and get along. (God figures in many of the tales, too.) Their comings and goings intertwine, sometimes to their benefit, but sometimes not. When it rains, it’s a deluge — water rises above ankle-deep, to the second or third step. Their challenges are heartbreaking.

The characters, for all their real-life troubles, remain drawn in Eisner’s cartoony style: The good looking women are dames, the handsome men are just this side of cads, the bad guys are weasels and the goons are, well, goony. Yet they are real. Look at the opening picture in the story “Shabbasgoy”: well-dressed Elton Shaftsbury II, who lost everything in the stock market crash, stands in the falling snow near a subway entrance. He’s cold — see his hunched shoulders — and he’s reduced to selling apples, at five cents apiece. The tall spire behind him highlights his isolation; he doesn’t touch the apples or the subway stair post. He is completely alone, and his body language shows us that is exactly how he feels.

I saw Eisner once, in the mid-1980s at a conference for comic strip artists as part of Ohio State University’s Cartoon Library and Museum. He was asked what advice he would give to those trying to succeed in newspaper comic-strip syndication. His answer essentially was, Ah, forget about syndicates, they’ll just break your heart. Do comic books instead. Then he smiled.

The man was brilliant and he knew his mind. Always, apparently.