Have you ever wanted to see the phases of a comic book in production? How it goes from rough layouts to finished pages?

And even if you’re already a professional in the industry, would you like to see how a master does it?

Alex Saviuk — who may be best known for his 80-issue stint on Web of Spider-Man from 1988-94 and who currently draws the Sunday “Amazing Spider-Man” newspaper strip by Stan Lee — was a student of Will Eisner’s at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in the 1970s. Thirty years later, when Eisner agreed to contribute a story to Michael Chabon’s Dark Horse comic book, “The Escapist,” he asked Saviuk to help him with some of the finer detail. The story, in which Eisner’s Spirit meets the Escapist, became Eisner’s final work; he literally sent off the pages in December 2004 before he went to the hospital complaining of chest pains and difficulty breathing.

I met Saviuk at Megacon in Orlando in late February 2006 when this series was just a concept. We talked about doing an interview and he told me about the process of working with Eisner.

Saviuk sent me the pages you’re about to see with the intention of doing a related interview. “These are Will’s roughs to my pencils to his finishes,” he explains. He’s been extremely busy, however, so I asked if I could go ahead and share these pages in the meantime.

If you haven’t bought the finished product yet, do. It’s a great piece of work and a wonderful tease and lead-in to Darwyn Cooke and Jeph Loeb’s upcoming “Batman/Spirit” and Cooke’s monthly “Spirit” series for DC. (To learn more about Alex Saviuk’s career, check out this podcast interview he did with Vincent Zurzolo on World Talk Radio’s “Comic Cast”; if you’d like to check out his latest work, surf over to Feast of the Seven Fishes.)

(Many thanks to Ann Eisner and Michael Chabon for granting permission to share these pages.)

Will Eisner’s rough, above.

Alex Saviuk tightened Eisner’s rough, above.

Eisner finished the page, above.





All three of these books feature artwork by Alex Saviuk.


Eisner’s rough, above.

Saviuk tightens the page, above.

Eisner finished the page, above.