Spirit of Comics

Will Eisner died yesterday from complications due to quadruple bypass heart surgery he had last week. Reading Eisner's "A Contract With God" in college re-ignited my passion for comics and opened my eyes to new narrative possibilities. Only the other day as I read a book on comics lettering I was awed by the innovations he made back in the 30s and 40s with "The Spirit". While so many of his contemporaries were hacking it out, Eisner was laying the foundations for complex storytelling in comics, telling great stories of warmth, intelligence and humor and rendering jaw-dropping compositions—sometimes all in one page!

The Comics Journal Message Board is full of "devastated" comments. I wholeheartedly concur. Susan Sontag and Jerry Orbach were big enough blows, and it certainly was sad to hear my old congresswoman Shirley Chisolm had passed away. But Eisner had gone strong for so long it seemed like he'd go on forever. Well, his legacy certainly will.