CLOSE-UP

early 1940s was a smash in
critical circles, but commer-
cially received only mild
attention.
Undaunted, Eisner con-
tinues to experiment with the
medium.
"My entire life has been
devoted to experimentation
with the art form, which still
hasn't reached maturity. To-
day, the very word 'comic' is a
misnomer, because most of
what's out there is not meant
to make you laugh, but to
make you think," he says.
Even in the 1930s, Eisner
knew he was in the minority.
"Most cartoonists did not
regard comics as a literary
form, as I did. They were look-
ed on as entertainment. Com-
ics were junk food, and the
comic artists were unter-
menschen — even the daily
strip artists looked down on
us."
Eisner differed from his col-
leagues in other ways as well.
Unlike most cartoonists of the
time, who sold their copy-
rights to the syndicates,
Eisner insisted on keeping all
rights to his work.
From the mid-1940's to the
early 1970s, Eisner abandon-
ed the world of entertainment
comics to experiment with
other applications of the
medium. He was a pioneer in
industrial and commercial
applications of comic strips,
and soon had a thriving com-
pany producing training
brochures for General Motors,
U.S. Steel, the American Red
Cross and the Department of
Defense.
"Comics can be a very
valuable teaching tool,"
Eisner says. "Combining
words and pictures in a se-
quence creates a powerful
tool."
In 1980, Eisner wrote a

landmark textbook, Comics
and Sequential Art, now in its
fifth edition. The book is used
not only in art schools, but
also in film classes in many
universities, Eisner says.
Today, Eisner teaches at the
School of Visual Arts, produc-
ing graphic novels and ex-
perimenting with new ap-
plications of the medium.
"I'm working on a project
aimed at the literacy pro-
blem," he says. "There are
some exciting possibilities of
using television applications."
Simon also dabbled in other
applications of the medium.
While in the Coast Guard, he
was sent to Washington, D.C.,
to do comic books and strips
rather than being shipped
overseas.
"The Coast Guard Academy
wanted me to do a recruiting
book in comics," he says. "I
got a commendation for that."
But Simon's greatest suc-
cesses have been the endur-
ing characters he created
with his partner, Jack Kirby.
While Captain America was
being published by Timely
Comics (which later evolved
into Marvel), DC was
publishing Boy Commandos,
one of the most popular com-
ics of the war years.
Simon didn't abandon
Timely; he continued to edit
the entire line of superheroes,
including characters like the
Sub-Mariner and the Human
rIbrch, both favorites to this
day.
At DC, Simon and Kirby
came up with the Sandman,
Manhunter, the Guardian,
and the Newsboy Legion, as
well as their most successful
creation, Young Romance.
Young Romance was our
biggest hit," Simon says. "It
was the first romance comic,
and it lasted for 10 years on

(c)1985 Will Eisner Studios

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(c)Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Used with permission.

top of the whole field. I think
Jack and I were the only two
people in comics to have more
than one hit."

ouble-dealing and
copyright fights
were the norm in
those early days,
says Simon, whose memoirs
The Comic Book Makers, will
soon be published. "The
young men who worked in
comics' golden age were as
bizarre as the characters they
created," declares the cover
blurb. Simon has the stories
to back it up.
"We had a mental patient
who used to do the horror
stories. He was about the best
in the business. And then
there was the guy who did our
crime comics. He ended up
bludgeoning a woman to
death with an electric iron.
He was the foremost figure in
crime comics in his day. Some
of this stuff was just
unbelievable."
The Simon-Kirby team
parted ways in the early

"The superhero
has his origins in
the folk hero. He
represents an
attempt to deal
with forces that
are considered
otherwise
undefeatable, and
that ties in
somehow with the
n'shama of the
Jewish people."

1950s. "Joe went on to com-
mercial art, and I felt that
anything other than comics
was not storytelling," Simon
says.
Kirby says he went back
and forth between the two
major houses, creating The
Challengers of the Unknown
for DC before settling in at
Marvel, where he played a
vital role in the creation of
what was known as the
Marvel Age. New characters
like Spiderman, Iron Man,
The Hulk, Fantastic Four and
the Black Panther (the first
black superhero) added an
element of pathos and
humanity to the world of
superheroics.
In the late 1960s, Kirby
returned amid much fanfare
to DC, where he introduced
the counterculture to
mainstream comics and
created an entire modern
mythology in the New Gods.
"All of my characters are
based on real people," Kirby
says. "Darkseid (the villain of
The New Gods) is the man we
never see, the man who runs
things. He's not exactly a god,
but a super-businessman.
"Captain. America was me,
and I was Captain America.
I saw him as part of me, and
he always will be. In the fight
scenes, when Cap used to
take on seven men at once
and five bodies would fly
around the room while he
punched two in the jaw —
that's how I remember the
street fights from my
childhood.
"Jewish kids then were rais-
ed with a belief in moral
values. In the movies, good
always triumphed over evil.
Underneath all of the sophis-
tication of modern comics, all
the twists and psychological
drama, good triumphs over
evil.
"Those are the things I
learned from my parents and
from the Bible. It's part of my
Jewish heritage," Kirby says.
"I'm part of a generation
that was very conscious of our
Jewishness, but we were not
Jewish scholars," Eisner adds.
"As time went on, I developed
a strong Jewish identity. I
read as much about Jewish
things as I can. Right now,
I'm working
through
Maimonides and through
Paul Johnson's History of the
Jews.
"If you scratch through the
surface, everything I do, write
or draw has a Jewish side to
it."

.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1989

_Als—t S..

II

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