March 6, 2010
Born March 6th in 1917, the great Will Eisner would be 93 years old today!
This man did more to establish common tools in great comic storytelling than anyone. The things that Eisner experimented with and perfected are tools all good comic storytellers employ to this day.
He innovated different formats as well. He and partner Jerry Iger were part of the very first wave of comics “packagers” that supplied content to comic book publishers in the 1930’s and ’40’s, creating whole comics to Quality Comics. Characters like Plastic Man, Uncle Sam, Black Condor, The Ray, Blackhawk, Midnight, Firebrand, The Phantom Lady and Quality’s entire stable of super hero titles (see more in my on-going “Slight History of the Golden Age of Comic Books: Super Heroes” series here in this blog) were all produced by the Eisner-Iger studios.
Artists from Lou Fine, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Jules Feiffer, Jack Coleand the wonderful Mr. Eisner himself all cranked out genuine comic gold from this art house. All the while perfecting the storytelling tools created, designed and perfected from Eisner’s own head.
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