A Family Matter [Paperback]

Will Eisner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2009

This powerful graphic novel confirms Will Eisner as a master of the genre.

In this classic graphic novel, Will Eisner’s pen cuts an expansive swath through all aspects of the human condition. A Family Matter starts close to home, following a family as it gathers to observe the ninetieth birthday of its patriarch. While they must decide how best to provide for him, he ends up making a crucial choice of his own.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Eisner, who created the masked crime-fighter the Spirit in 1940, is one of the few early comic-books veterans still active and certainly the only one turning out new work more ambitious than the genre tales for which he is best known. Eisner now mostly creates graphic novels depicting Jewish life in America. In the latest, family members prepare to observe their patriarch's ninetieth birthday as he sits silent and paralyzed after a stroke. Eisner portrays the clan's ambitions, pretensions, and disappointments broadly. At the gathering, as long-standing resentments surface, family members face deciding how to provide for the old man, and he makes a crucial choice of his own. Family Matter lacks the scale of some of Eisner's newer work and features bluntly one-dimensional characters. But its depiction of how families are held together by a force "that sometimes seems to be neither love nor loyalty" rings true. Moreover, Eisner's drawing here, less slick and dramatic than that of his prime, has an agreeable looseness that helps convey the story movingly. Gordon Flagg --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Will Eisner was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, Will Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.

In a career that spanned nearly eight decades—from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics—Will Eisner was truly the 'Orson Welles of comics' and the 'father of the Graphic Novel'. He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, Sheena and countless others.

During World War II, Will Eisner used the comic format to develop training and equipment maintenance manuals for the US Army. After the war this continued as the Army's P.S. Magazine, which is still being produced today. Will Eisner taught Sequential Arts at the New York School of Visual Arts. The textbooks that he wrote based on his course are still bestsellers. In 1978, Will Eisner wrote A Contract with God, the first modern graphic novel. This was followed by almost 20 additional graphic novels over the following 25 years.

The "Oscars" of the Comic Industry are called The Eisner Awards, and named after Will Eisner. The Eisners are presented annually before a packed ballroom at Comic-Con International in San Diego, America's largest comics convention.

Wizard magazine named Eisner "the most influential comic artist of all time." Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is based in good part on Eisner. In 2002, Eisner received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Federation for Jewish Culture, only the second such honor in the organization's history, presented by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (July 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393328139
• ISBN-13: 978-0393328134
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,882,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

WILL EISNER was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, Will Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.

In a career that spanned nearly eight decades -- from the dawn of the comic book to the advent of digital comics - Will Eisner was truly the 'Orson Welles of comics' and the 'father of the Graphic Novel'. He broke new ground in the development of visual narrative and the language of comics and was the creator of The Spirit, John Law, Lady Luck, Mr. Mystic, Uncle Sam, Blackhawk, Sheena and countless others.

During World War II, Will Eisner used the comic format to develop training and equipment maintenance manuals for the US Army. After the war this continued as the Army's "PS Magazine" which is still being produced today. Will Eisner taught Sequential Arts at the New York School of Visual Arts. The textbooks that he wrote based on his course are still bestsellers. In 1978, Will Eisner wrote "A Contract with God," the first modern Graphic Novel. This was followed by almost 20 additional graphic novels over the following 25 years.

The "Oscars" of the Comic Industry are called The Eisner Awards, and named after Will Eisner. The Eisners are presented annually before a packed ballroom at Comi-Con International in San Diego, America's largest comics convention.

Wizard magazine named Eisner "the most influential comic artist of all time." Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-prize winning novel "Kavalier and Clay" is based in good part on Eisner. In 2002, Eisner received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Federation for Jewish Culture, only the second such honor in the organization's history, presented by Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

You can always find more information about Will Eisner at www.willeisner.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paying Attention to A Family Matter, April 7, 2000

By 

Martin Fass (Rochester, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Family Matter (Paperback)

This is an important, serious book, and it is also an enormously entertaining one. I am ordering it again because it demands to be read more than once, and to be saved, and to be offered to friends. If a friend should not return it, all the more reason to buy another copy, perhaps two or three, and keep things moving!

Mr. Eisner is unknown to most readers, but if you just possibly were alive and an avid follower of the greatest comics during the beautiful period of the fifties, you know who he is, you used to dream about The Spirit, and you will delight in reading as much of his work as you can. What better reason to try and live forever.

Do not wait!

4.0 out of 5 stars Families are complex, December 31, 2011

By 

Caroline Lim (Lexington, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Family Matter (Paperback)

Another graphic novel hit by Will Eisner, this one takes a look at family dynamics. A 90-year old man is confined to a wheelchair after a stroke and one his daughters invites the rest of the family over to celebrate his birthday.

As we are introduced to each of his sons and daughters, we're given an initial glimpse into their current lives. When they each come over to the party, we're given a glimpse into their past relationship with their father. Family relationships can be complicated, and there is none better than Mr Eisner at exposing the darkness in the souls of men and women while offering a glimmer of light.