Will Eisner Reader: Seven Graphic Stories by a Comics Master (Will Eisner Library) [Paperback]

Will Eisner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two of the seven stories in this collection (culled from Will Eisner's Quarterly magazine) show a side of Eisner little seen since The Spirit , his Sunday supplement in the 1940s and 1950s: his sense of humor. ``The Telephone'' is an amusing collection of one-page phone vignettes that highlight the more bizarre aspects of that instrument (for instance, a burglar who answers a ringing phone in a doctor's office and leaves off rifling through the drawers in order to offer medical advice). Black humor suffuses ``The Long Hit'': an assassin never manages to complete a job in 1934; 51 years later, having retired to Florida, he meets the man he was supposed to kill. Of the remaining tales, only ``A Sunset in Sunshine City'' is worthy of what one would expect from a ``comics master.'' It involves a cafeteria owner named Klop who retires to Florida only to find himself preyed on by a neighboring widow in pursuit of a husband and by a son-in-law who wants Klop to hurry up and die so he and his wife will get their inheritance. The rest of the stories are either melodramatic or cliched. The collection also includes an excerpt from Eisner's To the Heart of the Storm .

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics (December 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563896915
• ISBN-13: 978-1563896910
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,104,141 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

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A MINOR WORK, September 8, 2003

By 

Sesho "www.sesho.libsyn.com" (Pasadena, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Will Eisner Reader: Seven Graphic Stories by a Comics Master (Will Eisner Library) (Paperback)

This book consists of 7 comic stories from Will Eisner's Quarterly. The only sparkling story in the collection is the first, entitled "A Sunset in Sunshine City" in which an old retired cafeteria owner retires to a condo in Florida to spend the rest of his days with a newly made female friend. The problem is that his daughter's husband is involved in some bad business deals and needs money. So he schemes along with his wife to wrest his fortune from the old man.

The other stories range from unfunny to cliched to just plain silly. Especially bad is "Humans", in which Eisner's ill-suited style is put to use chronicling our human-like ancestors as they hunt a mastadon and learn the value of cooperation. You can see the endings of most of the stories before they come. They're trite. I would not recommend this to even the most die-hard Eisner fan. Seek your entertainment elsewhere.