WILL EISNER: A number of years ago, I began to assemble a selection of interviews with respected colleagues. Actually the idea started during a conversation with Milton Caniff. My idea was to simulate the kind of conversations after work at about 5pm in the Eisner/ Iger shop. I remember them as being very valuable. I felt that they were worthy of presentation. I began recording them in the Will Eisner Quarterly Magazine that I was running at the time and now Dark Horse has decided to collect them all. These were people, many of them no longer with us, but were very important to the field and had a lot to say. I felt that this kind of conversation between two professionals was a lot more revealing. An informal conversation between two professionals from the same industry has the tendency to be much more candid.

WE: He was very important when it all started.

WE: Mentor would imply a much closer relationship. He was more a model, if you will. He was a tremendously strong influence, as was George Herrimann. Caniff, Herrimann and Segar [the creator of Popeye – Ed.]. These were the men I was studying most assiduously because I felt that they made the greatest underlying contribution to the work I did.

WE: It was influenced by the audience… newspaper readers. The reasons for The Spirit’s level of endurance and standard of writing was because we were talking to a totally different audience, that of adults. The reason why I left the highly successful Eisner/ Iger Workshop was because the newspapers offered me the audience that I was hankering for. The Spirit did better on the newspaper newstand because it had mass appeal. It was too ‘adult’ for the comic book market.

WE: The reason for that was; as comic strips started, newspaper syndicates decided to upgrade the quality of the strips and they attracted book illustrators like Foster and Raymond.

WE: Yes, and Caniff was an example of that. He and those other artists represented that transition. When they started, the strips were purely cartoons, impressionistic - which is what I take cartoon art to be - he then began adding shadows and developing a sense of realism. It made me realise that what was needed was semi-realistic illustration - to combine extreme realism with cartoon/humour elements that would lead to a singular style.

WE: That story was based on fact. It was very much like the early days of the movie business. The entrepreneurs who came in were really thugs (laughs). Well, sort of. Remember, this was a frontier-style situation. Many of the men who started publishing had almost total control because they controlled distribution. It was very different from today’s situation, where you have small offset presses and with a few dollars one can start a publication. Unless you went through a publisher, no artist’s work could be commissioned.

WE: Well, in newspapers you had a certain amount of control, but not that much- in those days, newspaper syndicates owned the comic strips.

WE: Yes I do. It’s very important because it provides organic depth. When the artist and writer are different, there’s a struggle for sovereignty.

WE: When I met him he was getting on in years- it was only a few years before he died (1983). He had, by this point, virtually stopped doing comics- except for an occasional piece here and there. He was semi-retired and lived in Florida. He was a feisty character - angry with the field and the people in it, and angry at the amount of chicanery he perceived to exist in the medium. He was a curmudgeon.

WE: He wasn’t like Wally Wood, who was a sick man who destroyed himself. The industry is not to blame for Wally’s drinking, which resulted in his death.

WE: He was an articulate guy and very intelligent. I wished I had known him earlier.

WE: Actually, I believe the major turning point took place earlier, in early 1970, with the emergence of the underground cartoonists in San Francisco - I think they revolutionised the medium, and the marketplace was also affected mainly by Phil Seuling who started independent distribution to comic book stores. The eighties were different and it represented a sea change which saw publishers realising the importance of writers and artists. The creators had become the selling point and their names were featured on the covers for the first time, rather than the content.

WE: 1974. I did it in ‘74, it took 4 years to find a publisher. No-one would publish it.

WE: Oh, sure. I managed to find a small publisher called Baronet. (I’ve told this story a hundred times). I’d written the book in dummy form (readable pencil) and I called the largest publisher in New York.

The guy I spoke to there was rather brusque and asked me what I had to offer. I told him that it was something very new and the subject matter had never been attempted before. I knew if I’d said that it was a comic book the man would hang up on me. So I that I had a ‘Graphic Novel’. "Oh", he said, "that seems interesting. Never heard of that before. Come over." So I got an interview with him, he rejected it because to him it was really a comic book. So I went around from place to place, all the major comic book houses. It was my intent to keep the rights to the work, and in the early ‘70s, no comic book house of any stature would agree to such terms.

WE: Well, I used it without ever having heard the phrase before but I don’t think I was the first. It was an obvious description

WE: That’s exactly right. I’ve had this abiding thing since the ‘40s that this medium was capable of far more than just two mutants trashing each other, and I truly believed that I was working in a literary artform. As a matter of fact, I was the only one at the Eisner/Iger studio who intended to do this for the rest of his life. Everybody else wanted to be illustrators.

WE: Oh sure, Lou Fine, certainly. Jack Kirby was a journeyman, he regarded comics as a business and he had a very pragmatic view.

WE: It’s something we can’t get rid of, unfortunately. It’s part of what the comics medium has done to itself over the years. It’s a name we can’t seem to shed. It drives me wild when I have to use it as it doesn’t make any sense to me.

WE: In hindsight possibly. In The Spirit, I was doing a lot of satirical stuff in the late 40s that was similar to what Mad ultimately did, but as far as the adventure stuff, I think the E.C. stuff that Kurtzman and co. were doing were an outgrowth of the old pulp magazines of the early 30s.

WE: His approach was that of a journeyman, but his work was very dynamic. He was a very honest artist and he had tremendous internal power. We are talking about an attitude towards the medium. Jack, from the days when he was working in my studio, regarded what he was doing as art - he liked what he was doing, and he had a passion for excellence. He thought that this was a good way to make a living, it was something he knew he could do it well. He also had no qualms about being called a cartoonist unlike Lou Fine and Burne Hogarth.

WE: Well Kirby, in the interview, and the conversations I had with him before he died, did regard himself as having grown. He matured tremendously- remember that generally he thrived in partnerships, firstly with Joe Simon and then with Stan Lee. Lee was kind of a magician, and he would supply the initial thrust which Jack Kirby would jump into, and then develop whatever ideas very intensely. Lee and Joe Simon realised the marketing possibilities. Jack was basically intense about the product and nothing more. Later, as he matured, he began to believe in his abilities as a writer. The Marvel method of creating comics meant that Kirby did most of the work while Lee would provide ideas and dialogue. Jack began to resent the fact that Stan was getting the credit for being the creator and writer.

WE: There’s no question that he was a tremendous influence. He was an innovator, but what he brought most to the field was muscle. There was so much power- I remember once saying to him in San Diego that "inside you there is a Hulk waiting to get out." He laughed and said that I was probably right.

WE: Yes, he was a very feisty, tough little man, a fighter. He thought being tough was very important and didn’t think of himself as an intellectual.

WE: I wouldn’t say exactly saved - it never really died. It flatlined for a few minutes, but the medium will never die as long as there are people with something to say. Stan Lee was the PT Barnum of comics certainly. His genius was that he understood the reader. It was kind of a visceral understanding - the readers knew and understood him and loved what he was saying. He had another thing- he recognised talent, picking Ditko and people like that. I really wanted to do an interview with him, but he’d moved to the West Coast and it was hard to meet up with him.

WE: A tremendous influence. The reason why I included him in the interviews is that he is not recognised enough in that he aided and developed a basic skill. He was a highly imaginative man. He added a kind of sophistication to the form and was also quite an idealist- it was he and some other New York artists who embarrassed Warner Brothers into giving Siegel and Shuster some sinecure.

WE: Well I don’t know about the ‘baton’ thing – or even placing Neal "halfway" between anyone. One of the reasons why, in my interviews I don’t discuss pre-eminence is because everybody’s constantly contributing. Because there are people like yourself, who may not have the long view of things. Terry and The Pirates was my literature, but for your generation it would, of course, be something else. I loved Caniff, there was something very dramatic and powerful about what he was doing. Pure storytelling. It filled my imagination, but your experience would, of course, be different to mine.

AC