Better late than never: Booklist review of Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (October 2005)

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By BOB ANDELMAN
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(Note: Somehow, I never saw this review of my biography, Will Eisner: A Spirited Life, which was apparently published in Booklist in October 2005. I found it by accident on the Dark Horse Comics site; how long its been there, I have no idea!)

Will Eisner: A Spirited Life

Creators: Bob Andelman

Booklist, October 2005

Michael Chabon contributes a heartfelt introduction to Andelman’s first-ever biography of Will Eisner (1917-2005), and the story that follows is a real-life Kavalier and Clay. Present at the comics industry’s birth in the 1930’s, Eisner revolutionized the field not just creatively in work spanning from his 1940’s stories featuring masked crime fighter the Spirit to his later, pioneering graphic novels but also as businessman and entrepreneur, teacher, mentor, and the inspiration of countless young artists.

Andelman covers all those roles and points up Eisner’s uniqueness among his peers: he retained ownership of his creations, and that allowed him to reprint the Spirit stories at a time, decades after their original publication, when so doing cemented his reputation in a new era of comics fandom and facilitated launching a new career as a graphic novelist with A Contract with God (1978). Besides verifying Eisner’s impact on nearly every artist who drew comics in his wake, Andelman shows that Eisner’s influence extends to such film directors as Spielberg and Tarantino. (Gordon Flagg)

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Bob Andelman is the author or co-author of 12 books, including ‘The Consulate’ with Thomas R. Stutler, ‘The Profiler’ with Pat Brown, ‘Built From Scratch’ with the founders of The Home Depot, ‘The Profit Zone’ with Adrian Slywotzky, ‘Mean Business’ with Albert J. Dunlap, and ‘Will Eisner: A Spirited Life.’